Blocks: challenging SIMDs and VLIWs with a reconfigurable architecture
Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review
Contributors
Abstract
Demand for coarse grain reconfigurable architectures (CGRAs) has significantly increased in recent years as architectures need to be both energy efficient and flexible. However, most CGRAs are optimized for performance instead of energy efficiency. In this work a novel paradigm for reconfigurable architectures, Blocks, is presented. Blocks uses two separate circuit-switched networks, one for control and one for the data-path. This enables run-time construction of energy-efficient application-specific VLIW-SIMD processors on a reconfigurable fabric. Its energy efficiency is demonstrated by comparing Blocks to four reference architectures, a VLIW, an SIMD, a commercial low-power microprocessor, and a traditional CGRA. All comparisons are based on commercial low-power 40nm CMOS layout, including memories. Results show that Blocks can achieve a mean total energy reduction of 2.05x, 1.84x, 8.01x, 1.22x over a VLIW, an SIMD, an energy-efficient microprocessor and a traditional CGRA respectively. At the same time, Blocks delivers equal or higher performance per area due to its ability to adapt to applications by reconfiguration.
Details
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 2915 - 2928 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | IEEE transactions on computer-aided design of integrated circuits and systems |
Volume | 41 |
Issue number | 9 |
Early online date | 15 Oct 2021 |
Publication status | Published - 1 Sept 2022 |
Peer-reviewed | Yes |
Keywords
Research priority areas of TU Dresden
Sustainable Development Goals
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Keywords
- CGRA, Computer architecture, Energy Efficiency., Fabrics, Field programmable gate arrays, Performance evaluation, Program processors, Reconfigurable Architecture, Registers, VLIW