Occam-pi for Programming of Massively Parallel Reconfigurable Architectures

Abstract

Massively parallel reconfigurable architectures, which offer massive parallelism coupled with the capability of undergoing run-time reconfiguration, are gaining attention in order to meet the increased computational demands of high-performance embedded systems. We propose that the occam-pi language is used for programming of the category of massively parallel reconfigurable architectures. The salient properties of the occam-pi language are explicit concurrency with built-in mechanisms for interprocessor communication, provision for expressing dynamic parallelism, support for the expression of dynamic reconfigurations, and placement attributes. To evaluate the programming approach, a compiler framework was extended to support the language extensions in the occam-pi language and a backend was developed to target the Ambric array of processors. We present two case-studies; DCT implementation exploiting the reconfigurability feature of occam-pi and a significantly large autofocus criterion calculation based on the dynamic parallelism capability of the occam-pi language. The results of the implemented case studies suggest that the occam-pi-language-based approach simplifies the development of applications employing run-time reconfigurable devices without compromising the performance benefits.

Programming Real-Time Image Processing for Manycores in a High-Level Language

“…In previous papers we have demonstrated the suitability of occam-pi for expressing task parallelism in applications like FIR (finite impulse response) filter, DCT (discrete cosine transform) and Autofocus in image forming radar systems [4,5,18]; here we show the applicability of the approach also for truly data parallel computations.…”

“…The front end consists of phases up to machine independent optimization and the backend includes the remaining phases that are dependent upon the target machine architecture. The Ambric and the eXtreme Processing Platform (XPP) backends were developed and describer earlier [18] [5]. We have also earlier described the P2012 backend, focusing on fault recovery mechanisms using dynamic reconfiguration [22].…”

“…The frontend of the compiler has been extended to support mobile data and channel types, dynamic process invocation, and process placement attributes [18] [5]. We have also introduced new grammar rules corresponding to the additional constructs to create Abstract Syntax Trees (AST) from tokens generated at the lexical analysis stage.…”

Managing Dynamic Reconfiguration for Fault-tolerance on a Manycore Architecture

“…The front end consists of phases up to machine independent optimization and the backend includes the remaining phases that are dependent upon the target machine architecture. The Ambric and the eXtreme Processing Platform (XPP) backends were developed in previous works [10] [5].…”

“…In earlier works, the frontend of the compiler has been extended to support mobile data and channel types, dynamic process invocation, and process placement attributes [10] [5].…”