Nexus Machine: An Active Message Inspired Reconfigurable Architecture for Irregular Workloads

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Juneja, Rohan, Dangi, Pranav, Bandara, Thilini Kaushalya, Mitra, Tulika, Peh, Li-shiuan
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866916711973781504
author Juneja, Rohan
Dangi, Pranav
Bandara, Thilini Kaushalya
Mitra, Tulika
Peh, Li-shiuan
author_facet Juneja, Rohan
Dangi, Pranav
Bandara, Thilini Kaushalya
Mitra, Tulika
Peh, Li-shiuan
contents Modern reconfigurable architectures are increasingly favored for resource-constrained edge devices as they balance high performance, energy efficiency, and programmability well. However, their proficiency in handling regular compute patterns constrains their effectiveness in executing irregular workloads, such as sparse linear algebra and graph analytics with unpredictable access patterns and control flow. To address this limitation, we introduce the Nexus Machine, a novel reconfigurable architecture consisting of a PE array designed to efficiently handle irregularity by distributing sparse tensors across the fabric and employing active messages that morph instructions based on dynamic control flow. As the inherent irregularity in workloads can lead to high load imbalance among different Processing Elements (PEs), Nexus Machine deploys and executes instructions en-route on idle PEs at run-time. Thus, unlike traditional reconfigurable architectures with only static instructions within each PE, Nexus Machine brings dynamic control to the idle compute units, mitigating load imbalance and enhancing overall performance. Our experiments demonstrate that Nexus Machine achieves 90% better performance compared to state-of-the-art (SOTA) reconfigurable architectures, within the same power budget and area. Nexus Machine also achieves 70% higher fabric utilization, in contrast to SOTA architectures.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_12380
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Nexus Machine: An Active Message Inspired Reconfigurable Architecture for Irregular Workloads
Juneja, Rohan
Dangi, Pranav
Bandara, Thilini Kaushalya
Mitra, Tulika
Peh, Li-shiuan
Hardware Architecture
Modern reconfigurable architectures are increasingly favored for resource-constrained edge devices as they balance high performance, energy efficiency, and programmability well. However, their proficiency in handling regular compute patterns constrains their effectiveness in executing irregular workloads, such as sparse linear algebra and graph analytics with unpredictable access patterns and control flow. To address this limitation, we introduce the Nexus Machine, a novel reconfigurable architecture consisting of a PE array designed to efficiently handle irregularity by distributing sparse tensors across the fabric and employing active messages that morph instructions based on dynamic control flow. As the inherent irregularity in workloads can lead to high load imbalance among different Processing Elements (PEs), Nexus Machine deploys and executes instructions en-route on idle PEs at run-time. Thus, unlike traditional reconfigurable architectures with only static instructions within each PE, Nexus Machine brings dynamic control to the idle compute units, mitigating load imbalance and enhancing overall performance. Our experiments demonstrate that Nexus Machine achieves 90% better performance compared to state-of-the-art (SOTA) reconfigurable architectures, within the same power budget and area. Nexus Machine also achieves 70% higher fabric utilization, in contrast to SOTA architectures.
title Nexus Machine: An Active Message Inspired Reconfigurable Architecture for Irregular Workloads
topic Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.12380