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DRT: A Lightweight Runtime for Developing Benchmarks for a Dataflow Execution Model

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Architecture of Computing Systems (ARCS 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 12800))

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Abstract

Future computers may take advantage of a dataflow program execution model (PXM) for both performance and energy advantages. One key element to provide a compilation tool-chain for such machines is a framework for developing initial benchmarks. DRT (Dataflow Run-Time) is a tool that enables the fast prototyping of those benchmarks for the Dataflow Threads (DF-Threads) PXM. In this work, we show how to use DRT to develop dataflow based examples to be targeted by a future compiler for the dataflow PXM.

DRT has been written in portable C code (tested with the GNU C compiler), and it is open-source, therefore, it can be used on real machines based on architectures like x86, AArch, RISC-V ISA.

Here, we discuss some didactic examples, and we show how to study and debug the data exchange, which is flowing through frames that are detached from the data stack. We compare DRT against similar dataflow runtime libraries such as DARTS and OCR. Even though our environment is not yet optimized, we found that DRT outperforms the above runtime frameworks in terms of execution time. We also give an evaluation of the time and complexity to develop DF-Threads examples in DRT compared to the approach of using a full system simulator and FPGAs for more accurate modeling.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Checkout the DRT repository by this command: svn co https://svn.code.sf.net/p/drt/code/.

  2. 2.

    Source lines of code.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. The work of this paper is partly funded by the European Commission on AXIOM H2020 (id. 645496), TERAFLUX (id. 249013), HiPEAC (id. 871174).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Siena, Siena, Italy

    Roberto Giorgi, Marco Procaccini & Amin Sahebi

  2. University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Amin Sahebi

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  1. Roberto Giorgi
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  2. Marco Procaccini
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  3. Amin Sahebi
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Correspondence to Roberto Giorgi or Amin Sahebi .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Christian Hochberger

  2. Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Lars Bauer

  3. Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany

    Thilo Pionteck

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Giorgi, R., Procaccini, M., Sahebi, A. (2021). DRT: A Lightweight Runtime for Developing Benchmarks for a Dataflow Execution Model. In: Hochberger, C., Bauer, L., Pionteck, T. (eds) Architecture of Computing Systems. ARCS 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12800. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81682-7_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81682-7_6

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