Master of Science in Computer Science Thesis
Data Pump Architecture Simulator and Performance Model
The Data Pump Architecture (DPA) is a novel non-von-Neumann computer architecture emphasizing efficient use of on-chip SRAM and o ff-chip DRAM bandwidth. The DPA is parameterized by local memory size, memory bandwidth, vector length, and number of compute processors, allowing the architecture con figuration to be balanced for a given set of computations. The Data Pump Architecture Simulator and Performance Model is a functional simulator providing an implementation of the DPA as a software library. Simulation at this level provides the user with the ability to test algorithms for correctness as well as performance. A hardware designer may then use the Simulator as a tool to experimentally determine the e ffects of architecture parameters and software algorithms through performance data provided by the Simulator's model. The bene fit of the approach described here compared to alternatives such as logic/gate level or RTL/HDL software emulation is primarily a reduction in the time needed for 1) a designer to modify and compile a HDL design and 2) to perform the simulation. The Simulator serves as a bridge between the application speci fic hardware and software design. The result is the ability to use the simulator as part of a framework for rapidly investigating the construction of an optimal system architecture for a given set of algorithms. Investigations with the Walsh-Hadamard transform (WHT), a prototypical digital signal processing transform, are shown. The SPIRAL (www.spiral.net) code generation system is used to explore the space of WHT algorithms while the Simulator is used to explore the performance and trade-o ffs of di erent DPA configurations.