Invasive Tightly Coupled Processor Arrays

This book introduces new massively parallelcomputer (MPSoC) architectures called invasive tightly coupled processor arrays. It proposes strategies, architecturedesigns, and programming interfaces for invasive TCPAs that allow invading andsubsequently executing loop programs with strict requirements or guarantees ofnon-functional execution qualities such as performance, power consumption, andreliability. For the first time, such a configurable processor arrayarchitecture consisting of locally interconnected VLIW processing elements canbe claimed by programs, either in full or in part, using the principle ofinvasive computing. Invasive TCPAs provide unprecedented energy efficiency forthe parallel execution of nested loop programs by avoiding any global memoryaccess such as GPUs and may even support loops with complex dependencies suchas loop-carried dependencies that are not amenable to parallel execution onGPUs. For this purpose, the book proposes different invasion strategies for claiminga desired number of processing elements (PEs) or region within a TCPAexclusively for an application according to performance requirements. It notonly presents models for implementing invasion strategies in hardware, but alsoproposes two distinct design flavors for dedicated hardware components tosupport invasion control on TCPAs. 

Vahid Lari is a researcher at the Department of Computer Science, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nurnberg (FAU), since 2008. He defended his PhD degree on the topic of “Invasive Tightly Coupled Processor Arrays” in November 2015. He received his bachelor degree in computer engineering in 2005 from University of Isfahan, Iran, and master degree in computer architectures in 2007 from Sharif University of Technology, Iran. His main research interests include fault tolerance, programmable hardware accelerators, the design of massively parallel architectures and system level performance evaluation.