TY - JOUR AB - Branch and bound (B&B) algorithms structure the search space as a tree and eliminate infeasible solutions early by pruning subtrees that cannot lead to a valid or optimal solution. Custom hardware designs significantly accelerate the execution of these algorithms. In this article, we demonstrate a high-performance B&B implementation on FPGAs. First, we identify general elements of B&B algorithms and describe their implementation as a finite state machine. Then, we introduce workers that autonomously cooperate using work stealing to allow parallel execution and full utilization of the target FPGA. Finally, we explore advantages of instance-specific designs that target a specific problem instance to improve performance. We evaluate our concepts by applying them to a branch and bound problem, the reconstruction of corrupted AES keys obtained from cold-boot attacks. The evaluation shows that our work stealing approach is scalable with the available resources and provides speedups proportional to the number of workers. Instance-specific designs allow us to achieve an overall speedup of 47 × compared to the fastest implementation of AES key reconstruction so far. Finally, we demonstrate how instance-specific designs can be generated just-in-time such that the provided speedups outweigh the additional time required for design synthesis. AU - Riebler, Heinrich AU - Lass, Michael AU - Mittendorf, Robert AU - Löcke, Thomas AU - Plessl, Christian ID - 18 IS - 3 JF - ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems (TRETS) KW - coldboot SN - 1936-7406 TI - Efficient Branch and Bound on FPGAs Using Work Stealing and Instance-Specific Designs VL - 10 ER - TY - CONF AB - Compared to classical HDL designs, generating FPGA with high-level synthesis from an OpenCL specification promises easier exploration of different design alternatives and, through ready-to-use infrastructure and common abstractions for host and memory interfaces, easier portability between different FPGA families. In this work, we evaluate the extent of this promise. To this end, we present a parameterized FDTD implementation for photonic microcavity simulations. Our design can trade-off different forms of parallelism and works for two independent OpenCL-based FPGA design flows. Hence, we can target FPGAs from different vendors and different FPGA families. We describe how we used pre-processor macros to achieve this flexibility and to work around different shortcomings of the current tools. Choosing the right design configurations, we are able to present two extremely competitive solutions for very different FPGA targets, reaching up to 172 GFLOPS sustained performance. With the portability and flexibility demonstrated, code developers not only avoid vendor lock-in, but can even make best use of real trade-offs between different architectures. AU - Kenter, Tobias AU - Förstner, Jens AU - Plessl, Christian ID - 1592 KW - tet_topic_hpc T2 - Proc. Int. Conf. on Field Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL) TI - Flexible FPGA design for FDTD using OpenCL ER - TY - JOUR AU - Schumacher, Jörn AU - Plessl, Christian AU - Vandelli, Wainer ID - 1589 JF - Journal of Physics: Conference Series TI - High-Throughput and Low-Latency Network Communication with NetIO VL - 898 ER - TY - CONF AB - Version Control Systems (VCS) are a valuable tool for software development and document management. Both client/server and distributed (Peer-to-Peer) models exist, with the latter (e.g., Git and Mercurial) becoming increasingly popular. Their distributed nature introduces complications, especially concerning security: it is hard to control the dissemination of contents stored in distributed VCS as they rely on replication of complete repositories to any involved user. We overcome this issue by designing and implementing a concept for cryptography-enforced access control which is transparent to the user. Use of field-tested schemes (end-to-end encryption, digital signatures) allows for strong security, while adoption of convergent encryption and content-defined chunking retains storage efficiency. The concept is seamlessly integrated into Mercurial---respecting its distributed storage concept---to ensure practical usability and compatibility to existing deployments. AU - Lass, Michael AU - Leibenger, Dominik AU - Sorge, Christoph ID - 19 KW - access control KW - distributed version control systems KW - mercurial KW - peer-to-peer KW - convergent encryption KW - confidentiality KW - authenticity SN - 978-1-5090-2054-6 T2 - Proc. 41st Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN) TI - Confidentiality and Authenticity for Distributed Version Control Systems - A Mercurial Extension ER - TY - GEN AU - Tölke, Christian ID - 5418 TI - Sicherheit von hybriden FPGA-Systemen in der industriellen Automatisierungstechnik -- Anforderungen und Umsetzung ER - TY - GEN AU - Wüllrich, Gunnar ID - 5420 TI - Dynamic OpenCL Task Scheduling for Energy and Performance in a Heterogeneous Environment ER - TY - THES AU - Kenter, Tobias ID - 161 TI - Reconfigurable Accelerators in the World of General-Purpose Computing ER - TY - CHAP AB - In this chapter, we present an introduction to the ReconOS operating system for reconfigurable computing. ReconOS offers a unified multi-threaded programming model and operating system services for threads executing in software and threads mapped to reconfigurable hardware. By supporting standard POSIX operating system functions for both software and hardware threads, ReconOS particularly caters to developers with a software background, because developers can use well-known mechanisms such as semaphores, mutexes, condition variables, and message queues for developing hybrid applications with threads running on the CPU and FPGA concurrently. Through the semantic integration of hardware accelerators into a standard operating system environment, ReconOS allows for rapid design space exploration, supports a structured application development process and improves the portability of applications between different reconfigurable computing systems. AU - Agne, Andreas AU - Platzner, Marco AU - Plessl, Christian AU - Happe, Markus AU - Lübbers, Enno ED - Koch, Dirk ED - Hannig, Frank ED - Ziener, Daniel ID - 29 SN - 978-3-319-26406-6 T2 - FPGAs for Software Programmers TI - ReconOS ER - TY - CONF AU - Riebler, Heinrich AU - Vaz, Gavin Francis AU - Plessl, Christian AU - Trainiti, Ettore M. G. AU - Durelli, Gianluca C. AU - Bolchini, Cristiana ID - 31 T2 - Proc. HiPEAC Workshop on Reonfigurable Computing (WRC) TI - Using Just-in-Time Code Generation for Transparent Resource Management in Heterogeneous Systems ER - TY - CONF AU - Kenter, Tobias AU - Plessl, Christian ID - 24 T2 - Proc. Workshop on Heterogeneous High-performance Reconfigurable Computing (H2RC) TI - Microdisk Cavity FDTD Simulation on FPGA using OpenCL ER - TY - CONF AU - Lass, Michael AU - Kühne, Thomas AU - Plessl, Christian ID - 25 T2 - Workshop on Approximate Computing (AC) TI - Using Approximate Computing in Scientific Codes ER - TY - CONF AB - Hardware accelerators are becoming popular in academia and industry. To move one step further from the state-of-the-art multicore plus accelerator approaches, we present in this paper our innovative SAVEHSA architecture. It comprises of a heterogeneous hardware platform with three different high-end accelerators attached over PCIe (GPGPU, FPGA and Intel MIC). Such systems can process parallel workloads very efficiently whilst being more energy efficient than regular CPU systems. To leverage the heterogeneity, the workload has to be distributed among the computing units in a way that each unit is well-suited for the assigned task and executable code must be available. To tackle this problem we present two software components; the first can perform resource allocation at runtime while respecting system and application goals (in terms of throughput, energy, latency, etc.) and the second is able to analyze an application and generate executable code for an accelerator at runtime. We demonstrate the first proof-of-concept implementation of our framework on the heterogeneous platform, discuss different runtime policies and measure the introduced overheads. AU - Riebler, Heinrich AU - Vaz, Gavin Francis AU - Plessl, Christian AU - Trainiti, Ettore M. G. AU - Durelli, Gianluca C. AU - Del Sozzo, Emanuele AU - Santambrogio, Marco D. AU - Bolchini, Christina ID - 138 T2 - Proceedings of International Forum on Research and Technologies for Society and Industry (RTSI) TI - Using Just-in-Time Code Generation for Transparent Resource Management in Heterogeneous Systems ER - TY - CHAP AB - Many modern compute nodes are heterogeneous multi-cores that integrate several CPU cores with fixed function or reconfigurable hardware cores. Such systems need to adapt task scheduling and mapping to optimise for performance and energy under varying workloads and, increasingly important, for thermal and fault management and are thus relevant targets for self-aware computing. In this chapter, we take up the generic reference architecture for designing self-aware and self-expressive computing systems and refine it for heterogeneous multi-cores. We present ReconOS, an architecture, programming model and execution environment for heterogeneous multi-cores, and show how the components of the reference architecture can be implemented on top of ReconOS. In particular, the unique feature of dynamic partial reconfiguration supports self-expression through starting and terminating reconfigurable hardware cores. We detail a case study that runs two applications on an architecture with one CPU and 12 reconfigurable hardware cores and present self-expression strategies for adapting under performance, temperature and even conflicting constraints. The case study demonstrates that the reference architecture as a model for self-aware computing is highly useful as it allows us to structure and simplify the design process, which will be essential for designing complex future compute nodes. Furthermore, ReconOS is used as a base technology for flexible protocol stacks in Chapter 10, an approach for self-aware computing at the networking level. AU - Agne, Andreas AU - Happe, Markus AU - Lösch, Achim AU - Plessl, Christian AU - Platzner, Marco ID - 156 T2 - Self-aware Computing Systems TI - Self-aware Compute Nodes ER - TY - JOUR AB - A broad spectrum of applications can be accelerated by offloading computation intensive parts to reconfigurable hardware. However, to achieve speedups, the number of loop it- erations (trip count) needs to be sufficiently large to amortize offloading overheads. Trip counts are frequently not known at compile time, but only at runtime just before entering a loop. Therefore, we propose to generate code for both the CPU and the coprocessor, and defer the offloading decision to the application runtime. We demonstrate how a toolflow, based on the LLVM compiler framework, can automatically embed dynamic offloading de- cisions into the application code. We perform in-depth static and dynamic analysis of pop- ular benchmarks, which confirm the general potential of such an approach. We also pro- pose to optimize the offloading process by decoupling the runtime decision from the loop execution (decision slack). The feasibility of our approach is demonstrated by a toolflow that automatically identifies suitable data-parallel loops and generates code for the FPGA coprocessor of a Convey HC-1. We evaluate the integrated toolflow with representative loops executed for different input data sizes. AU - Vaz, Gavin Francis AU - Riebler, Heinrich AU - Kenter, Tobias AU - Plessl, Christian ID - 165 JF - Computers and Electrical Engineering SN - 0045-7906 TI - Potential and Methods for Embedding Dynamic Offloading Decisions into Application Code VL - 55 ER - TY - CONF AB - The use of heterogeneous computing resources, such as Graphic Processing Units or other specialized coprocessors, has become widespread in recent years because of their per- formance and energy efficiency advantages. Approaches for managing and scheduling tasks to heterogeneous resources are still subject to research. Although queuing systems have recently been extended to support accelerator resources, a general solution that manages heterogeneous resources at the operating system- level to exploit a global view of the system state is still missing.In this paper we present a user space scheduler that enables task scheduling and migration on heterogeneous processing resources in Linux. Using run queues for available resources we perform scheduling decisions based on the system state and on task characterization from earlier measurements. With a pro- gramming pattern that supports the integration of checkpoints into applications, we preempt tasks and migrate them between three very different compute resources. Considering static and dynamic workload scenarios, we show that this approach can gain up to 17% performance, on average 7%, by effectively avoiding idle resources. We demonstrate that a work-conserving strategy without migration is no suitable alternative. AU - Lösch, Achim AU - Beisel, Tobias AU - Kenter, Tobias AU - Plessl, Christian AU - Platzner, Marco ID - 168 T2 - Proceedings of the 2016 Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition (DATE) TI - Performance-centric scheduling with task migration for a heterogeneous compute node in the data center ER - TY - CONF AU - Kenter, Tobias AU - Vaz, Gavin Francis AU - Riebler, Heinrich AU - Plessl, Christian ID - 171 T2 - Workshop on Reconfigurable Computing (WRC) TI - Opportunities for deferring application partitioning and accelerator synthesis to runtime (extended abstract) ER - TY - JOUR AU - Torresen, Jim AU - Plessl, Christian AU - Yao, Xin ID - 1772 IS - 7 JF - IEEE Computer KW - self-awareness KW - self-expression TI - Self-Aware and Self-Expressive Systems – Guest Editor's Introduction VL - 48 ER - TY - GEN AB - Demands for computational power and energy efficiency of computing devices are steadily increasing. At the same time, following classic methods to increase speed and reduce energy consumption of these devices becomes increasingly difficult, bringing alternative methods into focus. One of these methods is approximate computing which utilizes the fact that small errors in computations are acceptable in many applications in order to allow acceleration of these computations or to increase energy efficiency. This thesis develops elements of a workflow that can be followed to apply approximate computing to existing applications. It proposes a novel heuristic approach to the localization of code paths that are suitable to approximate computing based on findings in recent research. Additionally, an approach to identification of approximable instructions within these code paths is proposed and used to implement simulation of approximation. The parts of the workflow are implemented with the goal to lay the foundation for a partly automated toolflow. Evaluation of the developed techniques shows that the proposed methods can help providing a convenient workflow, facilitating the first steps into the application of approximate computing. AU - Lass, Michael ID - 1794 TI - Localization and Analysis of Code Paths Suitable for Acceleration using Approximate Computing ER - TY - CONF AB - The first year of studying has been extensively researched applying different theoretical lenses to better understand the transition into Higher Education (HE). It is of particular interest to investigate how students deal with frictions between themselves as individuals and what they perceive to be dominant features of the first-year culture of their studies. To tackle this question, a qualitative longitudinal study was conducted. Based on a sociocultural understanding of attitudes and motivations, its aim was to closely follow a relatively small but highly diverse sample of students throughout their first year at a business school in order to develop an in-depth understanding of each individual’s motivational and attitudinal development. AU - Jenert, Tobias AU - Brahm, Taiga ID - 4465 KW - Enculturation KW - first-year students KW - beginning students KW - retention KW - drop-out TI - How Do They Find Their Place? A Longitudinal Study of Management Students' Attitudes and Motivations During Their First Year at Business School ER - TY - GEN AU - Funke, Lukas ID - 5413 TI - An LLVM Based Toolchain for Transparent Acceleration of Digital Image Processing Applications using FPGA Overlay Architectures ER -