Transcript Breakout Topics 1st Tier - RAMP

Breakout Report:
RAMP Grand Challenges
Eric Chung, Joel Emer, Paul Hartke,
James C. Hoe, James Holt,
Asif Khan, Christos Kozyrakis
Martha Mercaldi Kim, Andrew Putnam
Overview
• Immediate and long term goals for current
projects
• Characterization of “grand” problems well
suited for RAMP
• Grand Challenges
Goals
• Functional vs. coarse-grain performance
vs. cycle-accurate vs. structurally-true
– different needs (architectural insights vs.
performance tuning, vs. …)
– can different/opposing requirements co-exist
– different levels of model could feed each other
• We want to push beyond the capacity of
SW simulation
– scale, speed, level of detail
– do it faster/easier/better than SW simulator or
building ASICs
More Goals
• Get architects and graduate students to
build systems (working with constraints)
and to probe deeper than paper designs
• We are not replacing SW simulators in all
scenarios
• RAMP-red/white/blue/purple/….
– compatible, and reusable IPs
– need better-defined applications to drive
developments----what is RAMP red/white/blue
supposed to be good at any way?
Characteristics
(what simulators can’t do)
• Look at exotic and/or specialized systems
against a substantial software base
– and the not-so-exotic at extreme scale,
heterogeneity, parallelism, unreliability
• Enable software folks to get involved in
new architectures, feedback and iterate
– got to have more than fast HW, SW folks want
familiar tools and environment
• Enable user studies that measure the
“human factor”
Grand Challenges
• A viable methodology for architecture
research in 5 years
• to convince a real design team of an idea
• To really push the scale, 1,000,000 nodes
(in condition that is useful by others)
• An easily accessible parallel platform for
non-architects (e.g., to be used by parallelalgorithm folks)
• Develop a parallel architecture and
programming model/language suitable for
the masses (i.e., taught to freshmen)