Improvement of Heterogeneous Systems Efficiency Using Self-Configurable FPGA-based Computing

Proceedings of: First International Workshop on Sustainable Ultrascale Computing Systems (NESUS 2014). Porto (Portugal), August 27-28, 2014.Computer systems performance is is being improved today using two major approaches: general-purpose computers computing power increase (creation of multicore processors, multiprocessor computer systems, supercomputers), and adaptation of the computer hardware to the executed algorithm (class of algorithms). Last approach often provides application of the ASIC-based and FPGA-based hardware accelerators, also called reconfigurable, and is characterized by better performance / power consumption ratio and lower cost as compared to the general-purpose computers of equivalent performance. However, such systems have typical problems. The ASIC-based accelerators: 1) are effective for certain classes of algorithms only and 2) algorithms and software require adaptation for effective application. The FPGA-based accelerators and reconfigurable computer systems (that use FPGAs as a processing unit): 1) in the process of writing require a special program to perform computing tasks balancing between the general-purpose computer and FPGAs; 2) require designing the application-specific processor soft-cores; and 3) are effective for certain classes of problems only, for which application-specific processor soft-cores were previously developed. In this paper, we consider an emerging type of high-performance computer systems called self-configurable FPGA-based computer systems, which are deprived of specified challenges. We have analyzed the background of self-configurable computer systems creation, presented current results of our research, and introduced some ongoing works. Self-configurable computer systems are being developed within the project entitled "Improvement of heterogeneous systems efficiency using self-configurable FPGA-based computing" that is the part of the NESUS Action