Harmony: an execution model for heterogeneous systems

• Main Author: Diamos, Gregory Frederick
• Published: Georgia Institute of Technology 2012
• Subjects: Heterogeneous; Many-core; Compiler; Runtime; GPU; Processor; SIMD; Scheduling; Execution model; Modeling; Computing model; Computer architecture; Algorithms; Heterogeneous computing
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1853/42874

The emergence of heterogeneous and many-core architectures presents a unique opportunity to deliver order of magnitude performance increases to high performance applications by matching certain classes of algorithms to specifically tailored architectures. However, their ubiquitous adoption has been limited by a lack of programming models and management frameworks designed to reduce the high degree of complexity of software development inherent to heterogeneous architectures. This dissertation introduces Harmony, an execution model for heterogeneous systems that draws heavily from concepts and optimizations used in processor micro-architecture to provide: (1) semantics for simplifying heterogeneity management, (2) dynamic scheduling of compute intensive kernels to heterogeneous processor resources, and (3) online monitoring driven performance optimization for heterogeneous many core systems. This work focuses on simplifying development and ensuring binary portability and scalability across system configurations and sizes.