Simulation and performance estimation for the Rewrite Rule Machine

Abstract

The authors give an overview of the Rewrite Rule Machine's (RRM's) architecture and discuss performance estimates based on very detailed register-level simulations at the chip level, together with more abstract simulations and modeling for higher levels. For a 10000 ensemble RRM, the present estimates are as follows. (1) The raw peak performance is 576 trillion operations per second. (2) For general symbolic applications, ensemble Sun-relative speedup is roughly 6.7, and RRM performance with a wormhole network at 88% efficiency gives an idealized Sun-relative speedup of 59000. (3) For highly regular symbolic applications (the sorting problem is taken as a typical example), ensemble performance is a Sun-relative speedup of 127, and RRM performance is estimated at over 80% efficiency (relative to the cluster performance), yielding a Sun-relative speedup of over 91. (4) For systolic applications (a 2-D fluid flow problem is taken as a typical example), ensemble performance is a Sun-relative speedup of 400-670, and cluster-level performance, which should be attainable in practice, is at 82% efficiency.<>