Abstract
Lookaside accelerators (LAAs) enable opportunities to asynchronously offload computationally intensive tasks from the general-purpose processors to the accelerator in order to improve the overall performance of a given system. However, the communication overhead involved in moving data between the LAA and the CPU can be significant and can impact anticipated performance, diminishing the benefits of a LAA. This paper examines the communication overhead between LAAs and CPUs, focusing on the communication setup and data transmission components. We develop a mathematical model to analyse and capture the problem and investigate the conditions under which hardware accelerators provide effective performance. To verify and validate the proposed model, we carried out studies using an ARM-based platform. Experimental results reveal that the length of data send to the LAA significantly impacts the overall offload benefit of the LAA when compared with software-only solutions. Communication overhead, specifically communication setup latency, has a diminishing impact on smaller data lengths. The presented mathematical model and experimental results clearly demonstrate that the targeted data length for offload is a critical parameter when designing LAAs.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Proceedings of the IEEE 36th International System-on-Chip Conference, SOCC 2023 |
Editors | Jürgen Becker, Andrew Marshall, Tanja Harbaum, Amlan Ganguly, Fahad Siddiqui, Kieran McLaughlin |
Publisher | Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. |
Number of pages | 6 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9798350300116 |
ISBN (Print) | 9798350300123 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 22 Sept 2023 |
Event | 36th IEEE International System-on-Chip Conference 2023 - Hyatt Regency, Santa Clara, United States Duration: 05 Sept 2023 → 08 Sept 2023 https://www.ieee-socc.org/ |
Publication series
Name | IEEE International SOC Conference: Proceedings |
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ISSN (Print) | 2164-1676 |
ISSN (Electronic) | 2164-1706 |
Conference
Conference | 36th IEEE International System-on-Chip Conference 2023 |
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Abbreviated title | SOCC 2023 |
Country/Territory | United States |
City | Santa Clara |
Period | 05/09/2023 → 08/09/2023 |
Internet address |
Keywords
- Hardware accelerator
- Communication Overhead
- Performance Evaluation
- AMBA AXI
- FPGA
- System-on-Chip
- Accelerated Computing
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering
- Architecture
- General Computer Science