MC$^2$A: Enabling Algorithm-Hardware Co-Design for Efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo Acceleration

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Zhao, Shirui, Yin, Jun, Yao, Lingyun, Andraud, Martin, Meert, Wannes, Verhelst, Marian
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Zhao, Shirui
Yin, Jun
Yao, Lingyun
Andraud, Martin
Meert, Wannes
Verhelst, Marian
author_facet Zhao, Shirui
Yin, Jun
Yao, Lingyun
Andraud, Martin
Meert, Wannes
Verhelst, Marian
contents An increasing number of applications are exploiting sampling-based algorithms for planning, optimization, and inference. The Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms form the computational backbone of this emerging branch of machine learning. Unfortunately, the high computational cost limits their feasibility for large-scale problems and real-world applications, and the existing MCMC acceleration solutions are either limited in hardware flexibility or fail to maintain efficiency at the system level across a variety of end-to-end applications. This paper introduces \textbf{MC$^2$A}, an algorithm-hardware co-design framework, enabling efficient and flexible optimization for MCMC acceleration. Firstly, \textbf{MC$^2$A} analyzes the MCMC workload diversity through an extension of the processor performance roofline model with a 3rd dimension to derive the optimal balance between the compute, sampling and memory parameters. Secondly, \textbf{MC$^2$A} proposes a parametrized hardware accelerator architecture with flexible and efficient support of MCMC kernels with a pipeline of ISA-programmable tree-structured processing units, reconfigurable samplers and a crossbar interconnect to support irregular access. Thirdly, the core of \textbf{MC$^2$A} is powered by a novel Gumbel sampler that eliminates exponential and normalization operations. In the end-to-end case study, \textbf{MC$^2$A} achieves an overall {$307.6\times$, $1.4\times$, $2.0\times$, $84.2\times$} speedup compared to the CPU, GPU, TPU and state-of-the-art MCMC accelerator. Evaluated on various representative MCMC workloads, this work demonstrates and exploits the feasibility of general hardware acceleration to popularize MCMC-based solutions in diverse application domains.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_12935
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle MC$^2$A: Enabling Algorithm-Hardware Co-Design for Efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo Acceleration
Zhao, Shirui
Yin, Jun
Yao, Lingyun
Andraud, Martin
Meert, Wannes
Verhelst, Marian
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Hardware Architecture
An increasing number of applications are exploiting sampling-based algorithms for planning, optimization, and inference. The Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithms form the computational backbone of this emerging branch of machine learning. Unfortunately, the high computational cost limits their feasibility for large-scale problems and real-world applications, and the existing MCMC acceleration solutions are either limited in hardware flexibility or fail to maintain efficiency at the system level across a variety of end-to-end applications. This paper introduces \textbf{MC$^2$A}, an algorithm-hardware co-design framework, enabling efficient and flexible optimization for MCMC acceleration. Firstly, \textbf{MC$^2$A} analyzes the MCMC workload diversity through an extension of the processor performance roofline model with a 3rd dimension to derive the optimal balance between the compute, sampling and memory parameters. Secondly, \textbf{MC$^2$A} proposes a parametrized hardware accelerator architecture with flexible and efficient support of MCMC kernels with a pipeline of ISA-programmable tree-structured processing units, reconfigurable samplers and a crossbar interconnect to support irregular access. Thirdly, the core of \textbf{MC$^2$A} is powered by a novel Gumbel sampler that eliminates exponential and normalization operations. In the end-to-end case study, \textbf{MC$^2$A} achieves an overall {$307.6\times$, $1.4\times$, $2.0\times$, $84.2\times$} speedup compared to the CPU, GPU, TPU and state-of-the-art MCMC accelerator. Evaluated on various representative MCMC workloads, this work demonstrates and exploits the feasibility of general hardware acceleration to popularize MCMC-based solutions in diverse application domains.
title MC$^2$A: Enabling Algorithm-Hardware Co-Design for Efficient Markov Chain Monte Carlo Acceleration
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12935