Investigation of communication overhead of SoC lookaside accelerators

Alperen Bolat, Fahad Siddiqui, Sakir Sezer, Kasim Tasdemir, Rafiullah Khan

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

2 Citations (Scopus)
90 Downloads (Pure)

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 languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the IEEE 36th International System-on-Chip Conference, SOCC 2023
EditorsJürgen Becker, Andrew Marshall, Tanja Harbaum, Amlan Ganguly, Fahad Siddiqui, Kieran McLaughlin
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9798350300116
ISBN (Print)9798350300123
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 22 Sept 2023
Event36th IEEE International System-on-Chip Conference 2023 - Hyatt Regency, Santa Clara, United States
Duration: 05 Sept 202308 Sept 2023
https://www.ieee-socc.org/

Publication series

NameIEEE International SOC Conference: Proceedings
ISSN (Print)2164-1676
ISSN (Electronic)2164-1706

Conference

Conference36th IEEE International System-on-Chip Conference 2023
Abbreviated titleSOCC 2023
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySanta Clara
Period05/09/202308/09/2023
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

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