{"title":"VCSN: Virtual Circuit-Switching Network for Flexible and Simple-to-Operate Communication in HPC FPGA Cluster","authors":"Tomohiro Ueno, K. Sano","doi":"10.1145/3579848","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"FPGA clusters promise to play a critical role in high-performance computing (HPC) systems in the near future due to their flexibility and high power efficiency. The operation of large-scale general-purpose FPGA clusters on which multiple users run diverse applications requires flexible network topology to be divided and reconfigured. This paper proposes Virtual Circuit-Switching Network (VCSN) that provides an arbitrarily reconfigurable network topology and simple-to-operate network system among FPGA nodes. With virtualization, user logic on FPGAs can communicate with each other as if a circuit-switching network was available. This paper demonstrates that VCSN with 100 Gbps Ethernet achieves highly-efficient point-to-point communication among FPGAs due to its unique and efficient communication protocol. We compare VCSN with a direct connection network (DCN) that connects FPGAs directly. We also show a concrete procedure to realize collective communication on an FPGA cluster with VCSN. We demonstrate that the flexible virtual topology provided by VCSN can accelerate collective communication with simple operations. Furthermore, based on experimental results, we model and estimate communication performance by DCN and VCSN in a large FPGA cluster. The result shows that VCSN has the potential to accelerate gather communication up to about 1.97 times more than DCN.","PeriodicalId":49248,"journal":{"name":"ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems","volume":" ","pages":"1 - 32"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1000,"publicationDate":"2023-01-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"1","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"ACM Transactions on Reconfigurable Technology and Systems","FirstCategoryId":"94","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1145/3579848","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"计算机科学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMPUTER SCIENCE, HARDWARE & ARCHITECTURE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 1
Abstract
FPGA clusters promise to play a critical role in high-performance computing (HPC) systems in the near future due to their flexibility and high power efficiency. The operation of large-scale general-purpose FPGA clusters on which multiple users run diverse applications requires flexible network topology to be divided and reconfigured. This paper proposes Virtual Circuit-Switching Network (VCSN) that provides an arbitrarily reconfigurable network topology and simple-to-operate network system among FPGA nodes. With virtualization, user logic on FPGAs can communicate with each other as if a circuit-switching network was available. This paper demonstrates that VCSN with 100 Gbps Ethernet achieves highly-efficient point-to-point communication among FPGAs due to its unique and efficient communication protocol. We compare VCSN with a direct connection network (DCN) that connects FPGAs directly. We also show a concrete procedure to realize collective communication on an FPGA cluster with VCSN. We demonstrate that the flexible virtual topology provided by VCSN can accelerate collective communication with simple operations. Furthermore, based on experimental results, we model and estimate communication performance by DCN and VCSN in a large FPGA cluster. The result shows that VCSN has the potential to accelerate gather communication up to about 1.97 times more than DCN.
期刊介绍:
TRETS is the top journal focusing on research in, on, and with reconfigurable systems and on their underlying technology. The scope, rationale, and coverage by other journals are often limited to particular aspects of reconfigurable technology or reconfigurable systems. TRETS is a journal that covers reconfigurability in its own right.
Topics that would be appropriate for TRETS would include all levels of reconfigurable system abstractions and all aspects of reconfigurable technology including platforms, programming environments and application successes that support these systems for computing or other applications.
-The board and systems architectures of a reconfigurable platform.
-Programming environments of reconfigurable systems, especially those designed for use with reconfigurable systems that will lead to increased programmer productivity.
-Languages and compilers for reconfigurable systems.
-Logic synthesis and related tools, as they relate to reconfigurable systems.
-Applications on which success can be demonstrated.
The underlying technology from which reconfigurable systems are developed. (Currently this technology is that of FPGAs, but research on the nature and use of follow-on technologies is appropriate for TRETS.)
In considering whether a paper is suitable for TRETS, the foremost question should be whether reconfigurability has been essential to success. Topics such as architecture, programming languages, compilers, and environments, logic synthesis, and high performance applications are all suitable if the context is appropriate. For example, an architecture for an embedded application that happens to use FPGAs is not necessarily suitable for TRETS, but an architecture using FPGAs for which the reconfigurability of the FPGAs is an inherent part of the specifications (perhaps due to a need for re-use on multiple applications) would be appropriate for TRETS.