Co-RAM: combinational logic synthesis applied to softwarepartitions for mapping to a novel memory device

摘要

We introduce the application of current techniques for hardwarensynthesis of combinational logic blocks to large-scale softwarenpartitions for eventual implementation of these partitions in a novelnmemory device called "Co-RAM." The novelty of our approach is based uponnthe observation that a wide variety of largescale software functionalityncan be considered "stateless" by conventional hardware synthesis toolsnand so may be realized as combinational logic. By limiting the functionsnplaced in memory to combinational functions, we eliminate conventionalnsynchronization overhead associated with coprocessors. A significantnaspect of Co-RAM is that it is a system design concept that inherentlynmerges hardware and software design styles at the system level,nimpacting programming styles, system build approaches, and thenprogrammer's view of the underlying machine. A direct consequence ofnviewing the functionality as combinational is that the system state isnnot partitioned with the tasks. By Considering Co-RAM functionality tonbe stateless with respect to system state, Co-RAM functionality isninlined around the advancement of effectively unpartitioned systemnstate. The rules for procedural combinational logic synthesis are shownnto apply to a wide variety of software partitions. Results of ourninvestigation project speedups of 8× to 1000× for a range ofnalgorithms of varying problem size and for projected devices rangingnfrom conventional field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to highlynspecific combinational logic devices