The Art of Multiprocessor Programming

High-performance parallel computer architecture and systems have been improved at a phenomenal rate. In the meantime, VLSI computer-aided design (CAD) software for multibillion-transistor IC design has become increasingly complex and requires prohibitively high computational resources. Recent studies have shown that, numerous CAD problems, with their high computational complexity, can greatly benefit from the fast-increasing parallel computation capabilities. However, parallel programming imposes big challenges for CAD applications. Fully exploiting the computational power of emerging general-purpose and domain-specific multicore/many-core processor systems, calls for fundamental research and engineering practice across every stage of parallel CAD design, from algorithm exploration, programming models, design-time and run-time environment, to CAD applications, such as verification, optimization, and simulation. This journal special section will cover recent progress on parallel CAD research, including algorithm foundations, programming models, parallel architectural-specific optimization, and verification. More specifically, papers with in-depth and extensive coverage of the following topics will be considered, as well as other topics relevant to the design of parallel CAD algorithms and software tools. 1. Parallel algorithm design and specification for CAD applications 2. Parallel programming models and languages of particular use in CAD 3. Runtime support and performance optimization for CAD applications 4. Parallel architecture-specific design and optimization for CAD applications 5. Parallel program debugging and verification techniques particularly relevant for CAD The papers should be submitted via the Manuscript Central website and should adhere to standard ACM TODAES formatting requirements (http://todaes.acm.org/). The page count limit is 25.

Parallel CAD: Algorithm Design and Programming Special Section Call for Papers TODAES: ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems

http://profs.scienze.univr.it/~manca/mnc/membrane.pdf

A guide to membrane computing

Caches ideally should have low miss rates and short access times, and should be power efficient at the same time. Such design goals are often contradictory in practice. Recent findings on efficient attacks based on information leakage in caches have also brought the security issue up front. Design for security introduces even more restrictions and typically leads to significant performance degradation. This paper presents a novel cache architecture that can simultaneously achieve the above goals. Specifically, cache miss rates are reduced with dynamic remapping and longer cache indices, access-time overhead overcome with astute low-level circuit design, and information leakage thwarted by a security-aware cache replacement algorithm together with the performance enhancing mechanisms. We present both theoretical analysis and experimental results, using the SPEC2000 suite to evaluate the cache miss behavior, and CACTI and HSPICE to validate the circuit design. Our results show that the proposed cache architecture has low miss rates comparable to a highly associative cache and short access times and power efficiency close to that of a direct-mapped cache. At the same time it can thwart cache-based software side-channel attacks, providing both legacy and security-enhanced software a much higher degree of security. Additional benefits that the proposed cache architecture can bring, like fault tolerance and hot-spot mitigation, are also discussed briefly.

/pdf/a-novel-cache-architecture-with-enhanced-performance-and-2cybvj0ovd.pdf

A novel cache architecture with enhanced performance and security

Over the past decade, system-on-chip (SoC) designs have evolved to address the ever increasing complexity of applications, fueled by the era of digital convergence. Improvements in process technology have effectively shrunk board-level components so they can be integrated on a single chip. New on-chip communication architectures have been designed to support all inter-component communication in a SoC design. These communication architecture fabrics have a critical impact on the power consumption, performance, cost and design cycle time of modern SoC designs. As application complexity strains the communication backbone of SoC designs, academic and industrial R&D efforts and dollars are increasingly focused on communication architecture design. 

This book is a comprehensive reference on concepts, research and trends in on-chip communication architecture design. It will provide readers with a comprehensive survey, not available elsewhere, of all current standards for on-chip communication architectures.

KEY FEATURES
* A definitive guide to on-chip communication architectures, explaining key concepts, surveying research efforts and predicting future trends
* Detailed analysis of all popular standards for on-chip communication architectures
* Comprehensive survey of all research on communication architectures, covering a wide range of topics relevant to this area, spanning the past several years, and up to date with the most current research efforts
* Future trends that with have a significant impact on research and design of communication architectures over the next several years

On-Chip Communication Architectures: System on Chip Interconnect

We consider array languages (sets of pictures consisting of symbols placed in the lattice points of the 2D grid) and the possibility to handle them with P systems. After proving binary normal forms for array matrix grammars (which, even in the case when no appearance checking is used, are known to generate the array languages of arbitrary array grammars), we prove that the P systems with context-free rules (with three membranes and no control on the communication or the use of rules) are computationally universal, able to generate all computable array languages. Some open problems are also formulated.

Array-rewriting P systems

P systems, introduced by Gh. Paun form a new class of distributed computing model. Several variants of P systems were already shown to be computationally universal. In this paper, we propose a new variant of P systems, P systems with membrane creation, in which some objects are productive and create membranes. This new variant of P systems is capable of solving the Hamiltonian Path Problem in linear time. We show that P systems with membrane creation are computationally complete.

P Systems with Membrane Creation: Universality and Efficiency

Considerable research has been done in the area of bus-encoding techniques, for either power minimization or cross-talk elimination in system-level buses, but not both together. We propose No Adjacent Transition (NAT) coding scheme, a bus encoding technique that simultaneously reduces power consumption and eliminates cross-talk. NAT-encoding and decoding algorithms are proposed and an analytical study of power dissipation is presented.

A bus encoding technique for power and cross-talk minimization

As the CMOS technology scaled down to deep sub-micron level, the crosstalk effects due to the coupling capacitance between interconnection lines has become one of the main performance limiting factors. Several methods such as those based on routing strategies, skewing the timing of signals on adjacent wires, interleaving mutually exclusive buses, precharging the bus, and bus encoding technique, have been proposed to eliminate/reduce the crosstalk delay. In this work, we propose a bus encoding technique using a variant of binary Fibonacci representation to prevent crosstalk delay and give a recursive procedure to generate crosstalk delay free binary Fibonacci codewords. We show that m-bit crosstalk delay free binary Fibonacci codewords are used to encode /spl lfloor/log/sub 2/(F/sub m+2/)/spl rfloor/-bit bus, where F/sub m+2/ is the (m+2)/sup th/ Fibonacci number. So, a 32-bit bus can be encoded using 46-bit crosstalk delay free binary Fibonacci codewords.

Preventing crosstalk delay using Fibonacci representation

Energy efficiency of the underlying communication framework plays a major role in the performance of multicore systems. NoCs with buffer-less routing are gaining popularity due to simplicity in the router design, low power consumption, and load balancing capacity. With minimal number of buffers, deflection routers evenly distribute the traffic across links. In this paper, we propose an adaptive deflection router, DeBAR, that uses a minimal set of central buffers to accommodate a fraction of mis-routed flits. DeBAR incorporates a hybrid flit ejection mechanism that gives the effect of dual ejection with a single ejection port, an innovative adaptive routing algorithm, and a selective flit buffering based on flit marking. Our proposed router design reduces the average flit latency and the deflection rate, and improves the throughput with respect to the existing minimally buffered deflection routers without any change in the critical path.

Madhu Mutyam

Papers

Array-rewriting P systems

P Systems with Membrane Creation: Universality and Efficiency

A bus encoding technique for power and cross-talk minimization

Preventing crosstalk delay using Fibonacci representation

DeBAR: deflection based adaptive router with minimal buffering