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Title: Compiler-Driven FPGA Virtualization with SYNERGY
FPGAs are increasingly common in modern applications, and cloud providers now support on-demand FPGA acceleration in datacenters. Applications in datacenters run on virtual infrastructure, where consolidation, multi-tenancy, and workload migration enable economies of scale that are fundamental to the provider's business. However, a general strategy for virtualizing FPGAs has yet to emerge. While manufacturers struggle with hardware-based approaches, we propose a compiler/runtime-based solution called Synergy. We show a compiler transformation for Verilog programs that produces code able to yield control to software atsub-clock-tickgranularity according to the semantics of the original program. Synergy uses this property to efficiently support core virtualization primitives: suspend and resume, program migration, and spatial/temporal multiplexing, on hardware which is availabletoday.We use Synergy to virtualize FPGA workloads across a cluster of Intel SoCs and Xilinx FPGAs on Amazon F1. The workloads require no modification, run within 3--4x of unvirtualized performance, and incur a modest increase in FPGA fabric usage.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1846169
PAR ID:
10533673
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Publisher / Repository:
Communications of the ACM
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Communications of the ACM
Volume:
67
Issue:
8
ISSN:
0001-0782
Page Range / eLocation ID:
134 to 142
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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