Specialized Virtual Configurable Arrays

Dominique Lavenier - Frederic Raimbault

IRISARennes, France

lavenier@irisa.fr

UBSVannes, France

raimbault@univ-ubs.fr

SVCASpecialized Virtual Configurable Arrays

• Warning– Just ideas - no work (yet) performed

• The talk mainly aims to– get feedback - positive or negative !– open discussion / collaborations ?

Overview• Introduction

– exemplified from F. Raimbault talk• Virtual Configurable Arrays

– implementation - Advantages / Disadvantages

• Specialized Virtual Configurable Arrays– 2 examples : Genome / hyperspectral images

• Conclusion

FPGA support for Java

PCHardware

JAVAmachine

network

hardware support:any reconfigurable boards

Boards are different• architecture• FPGA family• power computation

We want to define a hardware support• independent of the FPGA boards• allowing fast implementation

Architecture

PE PE PECTRL

Application dependant• Nb of PEs

• PE functionality

Java Hardware Support

• We want an hardware support with the following features:– platform independent

• all FPGA boards can be targeted– fast implementation

• depending on the application and the available resources, an architecture must be synthesize in a very short time

Challenge

• The hardware support must provide:– A platform independent hardware

– A fast design implementation

Virtual Configurable Array

Specialization

Virtual Configurable ArrayIntroduction

Fixe implementation(Applicationindependent)

Applicationdependentimplementation

VirtualConfigurableArray

Virtual Configurable Array Implementation (1)

• Virtual CLBs– one virtual CLB is made of several physical CLBs

Virtual Configurable Array Implementation (2)

• Routing– physical CLBs are used as switches

Virtual Configurable Arrays

• Advantages– applications are portables– common design tools - open architecture

• Disadvantages– less resources / lower speed (how much ?)– no concept evolution

• still the same problems for programming, routing, ...

Virtual Configurable Arrays

• Platform independent

• Fast implementation

YES

NO

Specialized Virtual Configurable ArraysIntroduction

SpecializationofVirtual Configurable Arrays

CLB functionality

CLB interconnection

2 Examples

• Genome Computation

• Hyperspectral image processing

Genome Computation

• Data – DNA or Protein sequences– large databases

• Computation– data retrieval, classification, ...

– mostly based on sequence comparison

– time consuming but highly parallel

Genome Computation

• Needs:– high computation power– rapid test of new algorithms

• Features:– integer arithmetic

• 8,12,16 bits - no multiplication– efficient parallelization on linear arrays

Specialized Virtual Configurable Array for Genome Computation

CLB:• N-bit operators

Regular Routing• N-bit wires

VCLB

VC

LB i

CM CMCM

n-bit operator(32 operations)

5 bits7 bits7 bits

from i+3from i+2from i+1to i+3to i+2to i+1

to i-1to i-2to i-3

from i-1from i-2from i-3

routing switch

configurationmemories

Hyperspectral images processing

• Data– 3D cube– one image = qq 100 Mbytes

• Computation– compression, segmentation, …– very time consuming, but high level of

parallelsim

A few hundredspectrum

HyperSpectral Image Processing

• Needs:– high computation power– rapid test of new algorithms

• Features:– integer arithmetic– efficient parallelization on 2D arrays

Specialized Virtual Configurable Array for Hyperspectral Image Processing

MemoryVCLBRouting

Specialized Virtual Configurable ArrayConclusion

SVCA

FPGA

Architecture

Specialized Virtual Configurable ArraysConclusion

• One SVCA class of algorithms• Advantages

– platform independent - fast programming• Disadvantages

– small array - slow