Research Infrastructures for Hardware Accelerators [Paperback]

Hardware acceleration in the form of customized datapath and control circuitry tuned to specific applications has gained popularity for its promise to utilize transistors more efficiently. Historically, the computer architecture community has focused on general-purpose processors, and extensive research infrastructure has been developed to support research efforts in this domain. Envisioning future computing systems with a diverse set of general-purpose cores and accelerators, computer architects must add accelerator-related research infrastructures to their toolboxes to explore future heterogeneous systems. This book serves as a primer for the field, as an overview of the vast literature on accelerator architectures and their design flows, and as a resource guidebook for researchers working in related areas.Preface.- Acknowledgments.- Why Accelerators, Now?.- A Taxonomy of Accelerators..- Accelerator Design Flow 101..- Accelerator Modeling.- Workload Characterization for Accelerators.- Accelerator Benchmarks.- Future Directions.- Bibliography.- Authors' Biographies .Yakun Sophia Shao is a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at Harvard University, working with Professor David Brooks. Her primary research interests lie in the general area of computer architecture, with a particular focus on modeling and design for heterogeneous architectures. She received her B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Zhejiang University, China and her S.M. degree in Computer Science from Harvard University. Her paper was selected as one of the Top Picks in Computer Architecture in 2014. She is a Siebel Scholar and a recipient of the IBM Ph.D. Fellowship.David Brooks is the Haley Family Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. He joined Harvard in 2002 after spending one year as a research staff member at IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. Professor Brooks received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering at the University of Soutlƒ3