Towards a Programming Paradigm for Reconfigurable Computing: Asynchronous Graph Programming

Abstract

<jats:p>&lt;div&gt;The shift towards reconfigurable systems -hardware&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;and software that adapt themselves to an external context-&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;promises to unlock unprecedented performance, power consumption, and quality of service. However, reconfiguration imposes several challenges on the design of cyber-physical systems. Current design practices, including software frameworks and programming languages, are ill-prepared for supporting reconfiguration.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;In this paper, we explore Asynchronous Graph Programming, a programming paradigm and an associated model of computation designed for efficient and automated parallelization across processing elements, efficient reconfiguration (i.e., mapping of computational tasks across processing elements), and combining synchronous and asynchronous I/O handling within the same conceptual programming model. We also introduce an analytical model of parallelization, unlocked by Asynchronous Graph Programming, that can inform reconfiguration strategies.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;We analyze the implications of our model through an analysis of reconfiguration scenarios given a program’s characteristics; our analysis quantifies the benefits of reconfiguring software for higher levels of parallelism, given an amount of data left to process. We also introduce Horde, an open source Asynchronous Graph Programming interpreter, and use it to empirically validate the performance advantage of its automatic parallelism capabilities; in our experiments, automatic parallelization from one to four cores improves average case execution time by a factor of 2 and worst case execution time by a factor of 3.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;This manuscript has been accepted at the IEEE International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation (ETFA 2020)&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</jats:p>