SHF: Medium: Collaborative Research: Ultra-Responsive Architectures for Mobile Plattorm

SHF：媒介：协作研究：移动平台的超响应架构

• 批准号: 1161505
• 负责人: Thomas Wenisch
• 金额: $ 56万
• 依托单位: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-05-01 至 2017-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1161505&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SHF; Medium; Collaborative; Research; Ultra

Conventional microprocessors are designed primarily for sustainedperformance; they can operate at near-peak performance essentiallyindefinitely until their energy source is exhausted. In battery andcooling constrained environments such as mobile devices, sustained power(and, consequently, peak performance) must be limited to at most a fewwatts so that the device can dissipate heat using only passiveconvection. However, many interactive mobile applications (such ashandwriting/speech recognition or image-based search) instead call forbursts of intense computation in response to user input, creating theneed for a new ultra-responsive operating regime: rather than limit peakpower assuming sustained operation, systems should instead exploit heatstorage to enable brief computation bursts that greatly exceedsustainable thermal limits without overheating. This projectinvestigates an approach called "computational sprinting", the centralessence of which is to compute at unsustainable rates but only brieflyso that temperatures do not reach unsafe levels.The goal of this project is to address the architectural, thermal,electrical, and software barriers to ultra-responsiveness viacomputational sprinting. In particular, the project explores: (1)architectures and memory systems that sprint via parallelism (activatingtens of reserve functional units/cores) and voltage boosting(overdriving cores for single-thread performance) while facilitatingfast burst onsets; (2) thermal designs that improve thermal responsebehavior to enable longer and more intense sprints; (3) mobile-optimized electrical designs that provide stable supply voltagesdespite current surges of an order-of-magnitude or more; and (4) software mechanisms that explicitly manage limited thermal budgets and anticipate and stage data needed during the sprint. The projectincludes the fabrication of an experimental testbed to approximate thecomputational, thermal and electrical capabilities of a future many-coremobile device and to provide practical experience with sprinting.Project impacts include (1) developing and advancing techniques forimproving the responsiveness of mobile devices and (2) integrating thediscoveries into a new cross-departmental course on computer systemdesign.

传统的微处理器主要是为了持续的性能而设计的。它们基本上可以无限期地以接近峰值的性能运行，直到其能源耗尽。在电池和冷却受限的环境中，例如移动设备，持续功率（以及因此的峰值性能）必须限制在最多几瓦，以便设备可以仅使用被动对流散热。然而，许多交互式移动应用程序（例如手写/语音识别或基于图像的搜索）而是要求进行大量计算来响应用户输入，从而需要一种新的超响应操作机制：系统不是在假设持续操作的情况下限制峰值功率，而是相反，应该利用热存储来实现短暂的计算突发，大大超出可持续的热限制，而不会过热。 该项目研究了一种称为“计算冲刺”的方法，其核心是以不可持续的速率进行计算，但只是短暂地进行计算，以便温度不会达到不安全的水平。该项目的目标是解决建筑、热、电气和软件方面的障碍通过计算冲刺实现超响应能力。该项目特别探索：（1）通过并行性（激活数十个备用功能单元/核心）和升压（超速驱动核心以实现单线程性能）同时促进快速突发启动的架构和内存系统； (2) 热设计可改善热响应行为，以实现更长时间、更激烈的冲刺； (3) 针对移动设备进行优化的电气设计，尽管存在一个数量级或更多的电流浪涌，但仍能提供稳定的电源电压； (4) 明确管理有限热预算并预测和暂存冲刺期间所需数据的软件机制。 该项目包括制作一个实验测试台，以模拟未来多核移动设备的计算、热和电气能力，并提供冲刺的实践经验。项目影响包括 (1) 开发和推进技术以提高移动设备的响应能力，以及 (2 ）将这些发现整合到新的计算机系统设计跨部门课程中。