Partitioning Hardware and Software for Reconfigurable Supercomputing Applications: A Case Study

ABSTRACT

Often reconfigurable systems are reported to have 10× to 100× speedup over that of a software system. However, the reconfigurable hardware must usually be combined with software to form an entire system. This system integration presents a hardware/software co-design problem with many system engineering issues. Here, we present traffic acceleration on the Cray XD1 supercomputer and describe the costs involved in different hardware/software trade-offs.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.5 COMPUTER SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION
      C.5.1 Large and Medium ("Mainframe") Computers
          Subjects: Super (very large) computers

Additional Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.4 PERFORMANCE OF SYSTEMS
      Subjects: Design studies; Performance attributes

  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.9 Management
          Subjects: Software configuration management

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Management, Measurement, Performance

Keywords:
Supercomputing, System Integration, HW/SW Co-design