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Access Type
Open Access
Document Type
thesis
Degree Program
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Degree Type
Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering (M.S.E.C.E.)
Year Degree Awarded
2013
Month Degree Awarded
February
Keywords
GPGPU, FPGA, hardware acceleration, CUDA compatible, scalable, flexible
Abstract
Due to their suitability for highly parallel and pipelined computation, field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and general-purpose graphics processing units (GPGPUs) have emerged as top contenders for hardware acceleration of high-performance computing applications. FPGAs are highly specialized devices that can be customized to a specific application, whereas GPGPUs are made of a fixed array of multiprocessors with a rigid architectural model. To alleviate this rigidity as well as to combine some other benefits of the two platforms, it is desirable to explore the implementation of a flexible GPGPU (soft GPGPU) using the reconfigurable fabric found in an FPGA. This thesis describes an aggressive effort to test and validate a prototype GPGPU design targeted to a Virtex-6 FPGA. Individual design stages are tested and integrated together using manually-generated RTL testbenches and logic simulation tools. The soft GPGPU design is validated by benchmarking the platform against five standard CUDA benchmarks. The platform is fully CUDA-compatible and supports direct execution of CUDA compiled binaries. Platform scalability is validated by varying the number of processing cores as well as multiprocessors, and evaluating their effects on area and performance. Experimental results show as average speedup of 25x for a 32 core soft GPGPU configuration over a fully optimized MicroBlaze soft microprocessor, accentuating benefits of the thread-based execution model of GPUs and their ability to perform complex control flow operations in hardware. The testing and validation of the designed soft GPGPU system serves as a prerequisite for rapid design exploration of the platform in the future.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/3410415
First Advisor
Russell G Tessier