Conference Proceeding
Anton, a special-purpose machine for molecular dynamics simulation.
01/2007;
pp.1-12 In proceeding of: 34th International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA 2007), June 9-13, 2007, San Diego, California, USA
Source: DBLP
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Citations (0)
- Cited In (3)
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Article: Simulation and embedded software development for anton, a parallel machine with heterogeneous multicore asics
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ABSTRACT: Anton, a special-purpose parallel machine currently under con-struction, is the result of a significant hardware-software codesign effort that relied heavily on an architectural simulator. One of this simulator's many important roles is to support the develop-ment of embedded software (software that runs on Anton's ASICs), which is challenging for several reasons. First, the Anton ASIC is a heterogeneous multicore system-on-a-chip, with three types of embedded cores tightly coupled to special-purpose hard-ware units. Second, a standard 512-ASIC configuration contains a total of 6,656 distinct embedded cores, all of which must be explicitly modeled within the simulator. Third, a portion of the embedded software is dynamically generated at simulation time. This paper discusses the various ways in which the Anton simula-tor addresses these challenges. We use a hardware abstraction layer that allows embedded software source code to be compiled without modification for either the simulation host or the hard-ware target. We report on the effectiveness of embedding golden-model testbenches within the simulator to verify embedded soft-ware as it runs. We also describe our hardware-software co-simulation strategy for dynamically generated embedded soft-ware. Finally, we use a methodology that we refer to as concur-rent mixed-level simulation to model embedded cores within mas-sively parallel systems. These techniques allow the Anton simu-lator to serve as an efficient platform for embedded software de-velopment. -
Article: Dynamic software updates for parallel high-performance applications.
Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience. 01/2011; 23:415-434. -
Conference Proceeding: Hierarchical simulation-based verification of Anton, a special-purpose parallel machine
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ABSTRACT: One of the major design verification challenges in the development of Anton, a massively parallel special-purpose machine for molecular dynamics, was to provide evidence that computations spanning more than a quadrillion clock cycles will produce valid scientific results. Our verification methodology addressed this problem by using a hierarchy of RTL, architectural, and numerical simulations. Block- and chip-level RTL models were verified by means of extensive co-simulation with a detailed C++ architectural simulator, ensuring that the RTL models could perform the same molecular dynamics computations as the architectural simulator. The output of the architectural simulator was compared to a parallelized numerical simulator that produces bitwise identical results to Anton, and is fast enough to verify the long-term numerical stability of computations on Anton. These explicit couplings between adjacent levels of the simulation hierarchy created a continuous verification chain from molecular dynamics to individual logic gates.Computer Design, 2008. ICCD 2008. IEEE International Conference on; 11/2008
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