Performance evaluation of a simulated data-flow computer with low-resolution actors

Abstract

In the ambition to go beyond a single-processor architecture, to enhance programmability, and to take advantage of the power brought by VLSI devices, data-flow systems and languages were devised. Indeed, due to their functional semantics, these languages offer promise in the area of multiprocessor systems design and will possibly enable the development of computers comprising large numbers of processors with a corresponding increase in performance. Several important design problems have to be surmounted and are described here. We thus present a “variable-resolution” scheme, where the level of primitives can be selected so that the overhead due to the data-flow mode of operation is reduced. A deterministic simulation of a data-flow machine with a variable number of processing elements was undertaken and is described here. The tests were performed using various program structures such as directed acyclic graphs, vector operations, and array handling. The performance results observed confirm the advantage of actors with variable size and indicate the presence of a trade-off between overhead control and the need to control parallelism in the program. We also look at some of the communication issues and examine the effect of several interconnection networks (dual counter-rotating rings, daisy chain, and optimal double loop network) on the performance. It is shown how increasing communication costs induce a performance degradation that can be masked when the size of the basic data-flow actor is increased. The asociative memory cycle time is also changed with similar conclusions. Finally, the lower-resolution scheme is applied to the array handling case; the observations confirm the advantage of a more complex actor at the array level.