FractalSync: Lightweight Scalable Global Synchronization of Massive Bulk Synchronous Parallel AI Accelerators

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Isachi, Victor, Nadalini, Alessandro, Gallotta, Riccardo Fiorani, Garofalo, Angelo, Conti, Francesco, Rossi, Davide
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Isachi, Victor
Nadalini, Alessandro
Gallotta, Riccardo Fiorani
Garofalo, Angelo
Conti, Francesco
Rossi, Davide
author_facet Isachi, Victor
Nadalini, Alessandro
Gallotta, Riccardo Fiorani
Garofalo, Angelo
Conti, Francesco
Rossi, Davide
contents The slow-down of technology scaling and the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads have led computer architects to increasingly exploit parallelization coupled with hardware acceleration to keep pushing the performance envelope. However, this solution comes with the challenge of synchronization of processing elements (PEs) in massive heterogeneous many-core platforms. To address this challenge, we propose FractalSync, a hardware accelerated synchronization mechanism for Bulk Synchronous Parallel (BSP) systems. We integrate FractalSync in MAGIA, a scalable tile-based AI accelerator, with each tile featuring a RISC-V-coupled matrix-multiplication (MatMul) accelerator, scratchpad memory (SPM), and a DMA connected to a global mesh Network-on-Chip (NoC). We study the scalability of the proposed barrier synchronization scheme on tile meshes ranging from 2x2 PEs to 16x16 PEs to evaluate its design boundaries. Compared to a synchronization scheme based on software atomic memory operations (AMOs), the proposed solution achieves up to 43x speedup on synchronization, introducing a negligible area overhead (<0.01%). FractalSync closes timing at MAGIA's target 1GHz frequency.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_11668
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle FractalSync: Lightweight Scalable Global Synchronization of Massive Bulk Synchronous Parallel AI Accelerators
Isachi, Victor
Nadalini, Alessandro
Gallotta, Riccardo Fiorani
Garofalo, Angelo
Conti, Francesco
Rossi, Davide
Hardware Architecture
The slow-down of technology scaling and the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads have led computer architects to increasingly exploit parallelization coupled with hardware acceleration to keep pushing the performance envelope. However, this solution comes with the challenge of synchronization of processing elements (PEs) in massive heterogeneous many-core platforms. To address this challenge, we propose FractalSync, a hardware accelerated synchronization mechanism for Bulk Synchronous Parallel (BSP) systems. We integrate FractalSync in MAGIA, a scalable tile-based AI accelerator, with each tile featuring a RISC-V-coupled matrix-multiplication (MatMul) accelerator, scratchpad memory (SPM), and a DMA connected to a global mesh Network-on-Chip (NoC). We study the scalability of the proposed barrier synchronization scheme on tile meshes ranging from 2x2 PEs to 16x16 PEs to evaluate its design boundaries. Compared to a synchronization scheme based on software atomic memory operations (AMOs), the proposed solution achieves up to 43x speedup on synchronization, introducing a negligible area overhead (<0.01%). FractalSync closes timing at MAGIA's target 1GHz frequency.
title FractalSync: Lightweight Scalable Global Synchronization of Massive Bulk Synchronous Parallel AI Accelerators
topic Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11668