MRASM: A Multi-Level Rule-Based Architectural Synthesis Methodology for Hierarchically Clustered Parallel Systems

Pao-Ann Hsiung
Institute of Information Science
Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan.
( National Computer Symposium, Taiwan, December 1999.)

Abstract

Although hierarchical architectures are becoming more and more popular due to their high scalability and performance yet there has been a lack of synthesis methodologies that are targeted at such hierarchically clustered systems. A novel methodology called MRASM is presented in this paper for the design of hierarchically clustered parallel systems. MRASM is a multi-level rule-based synthesis approach to parallel architecture design. The synthesized architectures at each level are simulated and checked for constraint satisfaction. An intelligent design space exploration method is incorporated into the simulation environment so that the target system is improved upon iteratively. One of the various alternative architectures is selected based on factors such as cost, throughput, utilization, bandwidth, scalability, reliability, and fault-tolerance. Experiments show that our approach is indeed feasible.