2022-05618 - Post-Doctoral Research Visit F/M Can a two-dimensional address space improve the spatial locality of memory accesses?
Contract type : Fixed-term contract
Level of qualifications required : PhD or equivalent
Fonction : Post-Doctoral Research Visit
About the research centre or Inria departmentThe Inria Rennes - Bretagne Atlantique Centre is one of Inria's eight centres and has more than thirty research teams. The Inria Center is a major and recognized player in the field of digital sciences. It is at the heart of a rich R&D and innovation ecosystem: highly innovative PMEs, large industrial groups, competitiveness clusters, research and higher education players, laboratories of excellence, technological research institute, etc.
ContextThis post-doctoral project is funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) as part of the Maplurinum project. The Maplurinum project revisits the foundations of computer architecture and operating systems for cloud computing and high-performance computing, to better manage the growing heterogeneneity of hardware components. A 128-bit address space is considered as one of the possible solutions to achieve this goal.
This post-doctoral project focuses on some of the architectural implications of a 128-bit address space. However, instead of representing an address as a single value like existing instruction-set architectures (ISAs) do, we consider the possibility to represent an address as two 64-bit values: an X coordinate and a Y coordinate. Our intuition is that the data structures used by programmers are often multi-dimensional, and that mapping a multi- dimensional data structure onto a one-dimensional address space degrades the spatial locality of memory accesses. Spatial locality is an empirical, qualitative property of programs stating that memory addresses that are spatially close to each other are likely to be accessed during the same period of time. This property is heavily exploited by high-performance microarchitectures. Nevertheless, there exists workloads processing a large amount of data with poor spatial locality. Performance-wise, these workloads suffer from long-latency memory accesses. The main objective of this post- doctoral project is to answer the following question: can a two-dimensional (2D) address space improve the spatial locality of memory accesses?
To study a 2D address space, ideally, one would need to create a new ISA, adapt a compiler and an operating system to this ISA, invent a new microarchitecture and write a simulator to evaluate performance. This would be a daunting task, far beyond the time and resources this project can afford. The main objective of this post-doctoral project is precisely to tell whether continuing in that direction would be worth the effort.
To get around this chicken-and-egg problem, we have developed a C++ library called MXY allowing to write algorithms in a language resembling the C programming language. Executing an algorithm written with MXY generates an address trace which can then be analyzed. The current, early version of MXY just emulates a conventional one-dimensional memory. With adequate modifications, MXY will be able to simulate a 2D address space.
AssignmentSpatial locality is a loosely defined qualitative principle. Although a few attempts have been made to define spatial locality in a quantitative manner (see the references below), there is currently no consensus in the computer architecture community as to the best way to do it. Before diving into 2D address spaces, it will probably be necessary to understand what spatial locality means in the context of a multi-dimensional address space and define a suitable spatial locality metric. Once a metric has been defined and validated, the researcher will search for some realistic data structures and algorithms that can be used as benchmarks. Using MXY, the researcher will experiment with different ways to use a 2D address space, seeking to maximize spatial locality. If this exploration is successfull, the researcher will consider the implications of a 2D address space on virtual-to-physical address translation and on the microarchitecture, particularly caches and hardware prefetching.
References:
The researcher will focus on the proposed research topic and will try to answer the question asked in the title. The proposed research plan is a suggestion and may be subject to modifications if science dictates. The researcher is expected to be autonomous and will have freedom in determining the best course of action to answer the title's question.
SkillsThe candidate must have a PhD in computer science, specialized in a computer architecture topic or in a topic very closely related to computer architecture, such as compilation. Besides having a solid knowledge of classical computer architecture, the candidate should be able to question established conventions. Proficiency in C++ is required to modify MXY.
Benefits packagemonthly gross salary amounting to 2746 euros
General InformationInria is the French national research institute dedicated to digital science and technology. It employs 2,600 people. Its 200 agile project teams, generally run jointly with academic partners, include more than 3,500 scientists and engineers working to meet the challenges of digital technology, often at the interface with other disciplines. The Institute also employs numerous talents in over forty different professions. 900 research support staff contribute to the preparation and development of scientific and entrepreneurial projects that have a worldwide impact.
Instruction to applyPlease submit online : your resume, cover letter and letters of recommendation eventually
For more information, please contact [email protected]
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