Abstract:
A computing platform comprising a small form factor high performance computer for mobile high performance computing is provided. The computing platform comprises using small form factor design with a 64-core microprocessor/co-processor is provided. The small form factor high performance computer may include 64-core microprocessor/co-processors based on the ANNI Stem Cell HPC multicore datacenter chipset cluster of REMTEC.

Description:
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
       [0001]    The present application claims the benefit of Provisional Patent Application No. 61/891,598, filed on Oct. 16, 2013, and is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. 
     
    
     FIELD OF THE DISCLOSURE 
       [0002]    The present disclosure is generally directed toward portable high performance computing and more specifically to small form-factor high performance computing. 
       BACKGROUND 
       [0003]    High performance computing (HPC) began in the 1960s and generally refers to machines that have very large data processing capacities. These capacities may result from very fast processing devices, a very large number of processing devices, or both. 
         [0004]    While most computer programs would benefit from faster execution, HPC allows programs that are so processing intensive that, absent HPC, the results of such programs would not be provided in a useful timeframe. For example, modeling automobile crash test has many advantages over actual crash tests. However, the results must be provided in a timely manner so that good designs can be advanced to the stage and bad designs can be quickly eliminated. If the virtual crash test could not produce results faster than actual crash tests then, despite the costs savings of virtual crash tests, manufacturers would likely find the lack of timeliness prohibitive. 
       SUMMARY 
       [0005]    It is with respect to the above issues and other problems that the embodiments presented herein were contemplated. 
         [0006]    Certain embodiments described herein, generally relate to high performance computing. In one embodiment, portable high performance computing is provided utilizing multi-core microprocessor/co-processor (processor). The processor may comprise a number of cores arranged in a three dimensional (3D) array. The 3D array may be irregular (e.g., 2×3×4, 4×4×3, etc.) or a cube (e.g., 2×2×2, 3×3×3, 4×4×4, etc.). In one embodiment, the processor comprises a multicore, scalable, shared memory, parallel computing fabric, and further comprises a 3D array of computational nodes connected by a low-latency interlocking network-on-chip. In another embodiment, a high performance computing (HPC) platform is provided utilizing the processor and additional components, as will be described in more detail below, into blades and wherein the blades may form a server and wherein the server may be mobile. In another embodiment, the processor comprises a 64-core microprocessor/co-processor design based on the ANNI Stem Cell HPC multicore datacenter chipset cluster developed by REMTCS. In another embodiment, a hi 
         [0007]    Another object of the present disclosure is to provide a small form-factor HPC that customized architecture defines a multicore, scalable, shared memory, parallel computing fabric and consists of a 3D array of computational nodes connected by a low-latency interlocking network-on-chip. 
         [0008]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided comprising 64 high performance reduced instruction set computer (RISC) central processing unit (CPU) cores having a 64-bit architecture. 
         [0009]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided comprising a 1 GHz operating frequency per mini processor board. 
         [0010]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided comprising a 120 Gflops peak performance per mini HPC blade. 
         [0011]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided comprising a 1.9 TBs/second local memory bandwidth per mini HPC blade. 
         [0012]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided comprising a 120 GB/s network-on-chip bisection bandwidth per mini HPC blade. 
         [0013]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided comprising an 8.4 GB/s off-chip bandwidth per HPC blade. 
         [0014]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided comprising a 4 MB on-chip distributed shared memory per HPC blade. 
         [0015]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided comprising a 4 watt maximum chip power consumption per HPC blade. 
         [0016]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided comprising an IEEE floating point instruction set per HPC blade. 
         [0017]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided comprising fully-featured ANSI-C/C++ programmable chipset per HPC blade. 
         [0018]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided comprising GNU/Eclipse based tool chain per HPC blade. 
         [0019]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided wherein at least one chipset comprises a source synchronous sub-LVDS off-chip links for host or direct chip-to-chip interfacing. 
         [0020]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided comprising a chip-to-chip link operable to integrate up to 64 chips on a single board and which may further comprise a 324-ball 15×15 mm flip-chip BGA. 
         [0021]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided comprising a chipset utilizing a chipset wrapping utilizing a fire-resistant textile board capable of 1,700 hours of continuous operation at 500 degrees Celsius. In a further embodiment, the chipset wrapping is a NASA compliant chipset wrapping. 
         [0022]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC where at least one processor comprises an independent superscalar floating-point RISC CPU operating at 1 GHz and 2.6 Gflops/sec. The CPU further comprising an efficient general-purpose instruction set that excels at compute intensive applications while being programmable in C/C++ without requiring programming utilizing assembly language or other processor-specific intrinsic. 
         [0023]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided utilizing a memory architecture based on a flat memory map wherein each processor has a portion of the memory as local memory and comprising as a unique addressable slice of the total address space. A processor can access its own local memory and the local memory of other processors through regular load/store instructions. As a benefit, latency is very low and effective throughput is very high. In another embodiment, the local memory system is comprised of four separate banks, allowing for simultaneous memory access by the instruction fetch engine, local load-store instructions, and by load/store transactions initiated by other processors within system. 
         [0024]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided comprising a network-on-chip. In another embodiment, the network-on-chip comprises a 3D interlocking network that handles on-chip and off-chip communication. The network-on-chip network may be based on 64-bit memory transactions transparent to the program running. The network comprises three separate and orthogonal interlocking structures, each serving different types of transaction traffic: one structure provides on-chip write traffic, another structure provides off-chip write traffic, and another structure provides read traffic. 
         [0025]    In another embodiment, a small form-factor HPC is provided wherein the network and memory architecture is extended off-chip using source synchronous LVDS based serial links, such as to provide up to 1.6 GB/sec of effective bandwidth per link. In another embodiment, each processor comprises four links, one in each direction (north, east, west, south), allowing chips to interface with FPGAs and/or other processors. 
         [0026]    What has been described and illustrated herein is a preferred embodiment of the disclosure along with some of its variations. The terms, descriptions and figures used herein are set forth by way of illustration only and are not meant as limitations. Those skilled in the art will recognize that many variations are possible within the spirit and scope of the disclosure in which all terms are meant in their broadest, reasonable sense unless otherwise indicated. Any headings utilized within the description are for convenience only and have no legal or limiting effect. 
         [0027]    In some embodiments, a server is provided that generally comprises: 
         [0000]    a number of computational blades;
 
a backplane operable to provide communication between at least two of the number of blades; and
 
wherein each blade comprises;
 
at least one computer chip, further comprising, a plurality of computational nodes, each computational node comprising a multi-core processor,
 
a memory comprising a shared portion and a plurality of local memory segments associated with each of the computational nodes;
 
a network-on-chip operable to provide data communication within the platform and comprising a low-latency mesh having first, second, and third interlocking structures and wherein on-chip write traffic of the data communication is allocated to the first interlocking structure, off-chip write traffic within the platform is allocated to the second interlocking structure, and on-chip and off-chip read within the platform traffic is allocated to the third interlocking structure; and
 
an off-chip input-output interface operable to facilitate communications with an external component.
 
         [0028]    The phrases “at least one,” “one or more,” and “and/or” are open-ended expressions that are both conjunctive and disjunctive in operation. For example, each of the expressions “at least one of A, B and C,” “at least one of A, B, or C,” “one or more of A, B, and C,” “one or more of A, B, or C” and “A, B, and/or C” means A alone, B alone, C alone, A and B together, A and C together, B and C together, or A, B and C together. 
         [0029]    The term “a” or “an” entity refers to one or more of that entity. As such, the terms “a” (or “an”), “one or more” and “at least one” can be used interchangeably herein. It is also to be noted that the terms “comprising,” “including,” and “having” can be used interchangeably. 
         [0030]    The term “automatic” and variations thereof, as used herein, refers to any process or operation done without material human input when the process or operation is performed. However, a process or operation can be automatic, even though performance of the process or operation uses material or immaterial human input, if the input is received before performance of the process or operation. Human input is deemed to be material if such input influences how the process or operation will be performed. Human input that consents to the performance of the process or operation is not deemed to be “material.” 
         [0031]    The term “computer-readable medium” as used herein refers to any tangible storage that participates in providing instructions to a processor for execution. Such a medium may take many forms, including but not limited to, non-volatile media, volatile media, and transmission media. Non-volatile media includes, for example, NVRAM, or magnetic or optical disks. Volatile media includes dynamic memory, such as main memory. Common forms of computer-readable media include, for example, a floppy disk, a flexible disk, hard disk, magnetic tape, or any other magnetic medium, magneto-optical medium, a CD-ROM, any other optical medium, punch cards, paper tape, any other physical medium with patterns of holes, a RAM, a PROM, and EPROM, a FLASH-EPROM, a solid state medium like a memory card, any other memory chip or cartridge, or any other medium from which a computer can read. When the computer-readable media is configured as a database, it is to be understood that the database may be any type of database, such as relational, hierarchical, object-oriented, and/or the like. Accordingly, the disclosure is considered to include a tangible storage medium and prior art-recognized equivalents and successor media, in which the software implementations of the present disclosure are stored. 
         [0032]    The terms “determine,” “calculate,” and “compute,” and variations thereof, as used herein, are used interchangeably and include any type of methodology, process, mathematical operation or technique. 
         [0033]    The term “module” as used herein refers to any known or later developed hardware, software, firmware, artificial intelligence, fuzzy logic, or combination of hardware and software that is capable of performing the functionality associated with that element. Also, while the disclosure is described in terms of exemplary embodiments, it should be appreciated that other aspects of the disclosure can be separately claimed. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0034]    The present disclosure is described in conjunction with the appended figures: 
           [0035]      FIG. 1  depicts an illustrative multi-core processor in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure; 
           [0036]      FIG. 2  depicts an illustrative network-on-chip in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure; 
           [0037]      FIG. 3  depicts a first illustrative board in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure; 
           [0038]      FIG. 4  depicts a second illustrative board in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure; 
           [0039]      FIG. 5  depicts a third illustrative board in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure; and 
           [0040]      FIG. 6  depicts a fourth illustrative board in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
       [0041]    The ensuing description provides embodiments only, and is not intended to limit the scope, applicability, or configuration of the claims. Rather, the ensuing description will provide those skilled in the art with an enabling description for implementing the embodiments. It being understood that various changes may be made in the function and arrangement of elements without departing from the spirit and scope of the appended claims. 
         [0042]    The identification in the description of element numbers without a subelement identifier, when a subelement identifiers exist in the figures, when used in the plural, is intended to reference any two or more elements with a like element number. A similar usage in the singular, is intended to reference any one of the elements with the like element number. Any explicit usage to the contrary or further qualification shall take precedence. 
         [0043]    The exemplary systems and methods of this disclosure will also be described in relation to analysis software, modules, and associated analysis hardware. However, to avoid unnecessarily obscuring the present disclosure, the following description omits well-known structures, components and devices that may be shown in block diagram form, and are well known, or are otherwise summarized. 
         [0044]    For purposes of explanation, numerous details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present disclosure. It should be appreciated, however, that the present disclosure may be practiced in a variety of ways beyond the specific details set forth herein. 
         [0045]    In one embodiment, a processor is discloses. The processor further comprising 64-cores and configured to be operable as a microprocessor and/or co-processor. In another embodiment, the processor may comprise or perform according to one or more of: 64 high performance RISC CPU cores, 1 GHz operating frequency, 120 Gflops peak performance per mini HPC Blade, 1.9 TB/s local memory bandwidth, 120 GB/s network-on-chip bisection bandwidth, 8.4 GB/s off-chip bandwidth, 4 MB on-chip distributed shared memory, 4-Watt maximum chip power consumption, IEEE floating point instruction set, fully featured ANSI-C/C++ programmable, GNU/Eclipse based tool chain, source synchronous sub-LVDS off chip links for host or direct chip-to-chip interfacing, chip-to-chip links for integrating up to 64 chips on a single board, 324-ball 15×15 mm flip-chip BGA, and board construction is comprise a fire-resistant textile board capable of 1,700 hours of continuous operation at 500 degrees Celsius. 
         [0046]    In another embodiment, a mini HPC cluster is provided comprising a plurality of processors. In a further embodiment, the plurality of processors is twelve processors in pairs of four (quad). As a benefit, 480 Gflops may be provided by a quad. 
         [0047]    In another embodiment, two or more quads are stacked, such as to produce a petabyte or more of throughput in a small form factor, such as 3″×4″×4−6″. The form factor of the stack may be modified such as according to user need and/or environment. 
         [0048]    In another embodiment, one or more processors executes an artificial intelligence (AI) engine operable to discern critical data in large data streams and delivering the critical information. For example, the AI engine analyzes content or communications and then reports findings, wherein the reporting may utilize low-bandwidth communications. As a benefit the opportunity to adjust the communications environment on collection assets may be provided to accommodate low bandwidth communications or provide the opportunity to apply the solution to systems that are currently constrained by their ability to carry and sustain continuous high bandwidth communications. 
         [0049]    In another embodiment, an AI engine, such as one based on REMTCS Artificial Neural Network Intelligent Interface (ANNI) provides a learning process that operates through a series of proprietary algorithms derived from the inherent search-and-destroy behavior of human antibodies. ANNI, as described with respect to U.S. Patent Publication 2014/0215621 and entitled “System, method, and apparatus for providing network security,” and is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. As the ANNI solution learns, it gets faster and stronger over time. ANNI has proven adaptable to a range of problem sets characterized by high data volume and the need to identify change and derive context from complex data. 
         [0050]      FIG. 1  shows an illustrative multi-core processor  100  in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. In one embodiment, a number of cores  102  are arranged in a three-dimensional array, such as the illustrated 2×2×2. As can be appreciated by those of ordinary skill in the art, other configurations are contemplated without departing from the teachings provided herein. For example, non-cube configurations (e.g., 2×3×4, 4×4×3, etc.) and cube configurations (e.g., 3×3×3, 4×4×4, etc.) may be provided. In another embodiment, shared memory  104  is accessible by each of the number of cores  102 . 
         [0051]      FIG. 2  shows an illustrative network-on-chip  200  in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. In one embodiment, lanes  202 ,  204 ,  206 ,  208 ,  210 ,  212 ,  214  provide core-to-core, core-to-memory, memory-to-core, core-to-off-chip, and/or core-from-off-chip. In another embodiment, directional line pairs ( 202  and  204 ,  206  and  208 , and  210  and  212 ) are dedicated to a single type of communication, such as on-chip write traffic, off-chip write traffic, and all read traffic. 
         [0052]      FIG. 3  shows an illustrative board  300  in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. Board  300  may be, entirely or in part, a high-temperature chip wrapping textile, such as the NASA compliant fire-resistant textile board capable of 1,700 hours of continuous operation at 500 degrees Celsius. In one embodiment, Advanced RISC Machines System-on-chip (ARM SOC)  302  is provided and may further comprise a number of communication interfaces. ARM SOC  302  is logically connected to small FPGA  304  via a general purpose input-output. Small FPGA  304  is then logically connected to a number of processors  102 , such as a quad of processors  102 . 
         [0053]      FIG. 4  shows an illustrative board  400  in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. Board  400  may be, entirely or in part, a high-temperature chip wrapping textile, such as the NASA compliant fire-resistant textile board capable of 1,700 hours of continuous operation at 500 degrees Celsius. In one embodiment, large FPGA  402  comprises a number of communication interfaces. In another embodiment, large FPGA  402  is logically attached, such as by for eLinks, to processor  102 . 
         [0054]      FIG. 5  shows an illustrative board  500  in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. Board  500  may be, entirely or in part, a high-temperature chip wrapping textile, such as the NASA compliant fire-resistant textile board capable of 1,700 hours of continuous operation at 500 degrees Celsius. In one embodiment, FPGA with ARM  502  comprises a number of communication interfaces. In another embodiment, FPGA with ARM  502  is logically attached, such as by for eLinks, to processor  102 . 
         [0055]      FIG. 6  shows an illustrative board  600  in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure. Board  600  may be, entirely or in part, a high-temperature chip wrapping textile, such as the NASA compliant fire-resistant textile board capable of 1,700 hours of continuous operation at 500 degrees Celsius. In another embodiment, a number of analog-to-digital converters  602  are logically connected to FPGA  604 . In turn, FPGA  604  is connected to a number of processors  102 , such as a quad of processors  102 , and then logically connected to FPGA  612 . FPGA  612  is logically connected to a number of digital-to-analog converters  622 . 
         [0056]    In another embodiment, FPGA  604  comprises a number of serial interface chips  606 , such as JESD204, receiving the signals from the number of ADC  602 . Serial interface chips  606  are then logically connected to a number of direct memory access (DMA)  608 , and eLink  610 . 
         [0057]    In another embodiment, FPGA  612  comprises a number of eLink  614  logically connected to a number of DMA  618 , and in turn logically connected to serial interface chips  620 . 
         [0058]    In the foregoing description, for the purposes of illustration, methods were described in a particular order. It should be appreciated that in alternate embodiments, the methods may be performed in a different order than that described. It should also be appreciated that the methods described above may be performed by hardware components or may be embodied in sequences of machine-executable instructions, which may be used to cause a machine, such as a general-purpose or special-purpose processor (GPU or CPU) or logic circuits programmed with the instructions to perform the methods (FPGA). These machine-executable instructions may be stored on one or more machine readable mediums, such as CD-ROMs or other type of optical disks, floppy diskettes, ROMs, RAMs, EPROMs, EEPROMs, magnetic or optical cards, flash memory, or other types of machine-readable mediums suitable for storing electronic instructions. Alternatively, the methods may be performed by a combination of hardware and software. 
         [0059]    Specific details were given in the description to provide a thorough understanding of the embodiments. However, it will be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art that the embodiments may be practiced without these specific details. For example, circuits may be shown in block diagrams in order not to obscure the embodiments in unnecessary detail. In other instances, well-known circuits, processes, algorithms, structures, and techniques may be shown without unnecessary detail in order to avoid obscuring the embodiments. 
         [0060]    Also, it is noted that the embodiments were described as a process which is depicted as a flowchart, a flow diagram, a data flow diagram, a structure diagram, or a block diagram. Although a flowchart may describe the operations as a sequential process, many of the operations can be performed in parallel or concurrently. In addition, the order of the operations may be re-arranged. A process is terminated when its operations are completed, but could have additional steps not included in the figure. A process may correspond to a method, a function, a procedure, a subroutine, a subprogram, etc. When a process corresponds to a function, its termination corresponds to a return of the function to the calling function or the main function. 
         [0061]    Furthermore, embodiments may be implemented by hardware, software, firmware, middleware, microcode, hardware description languages, or any combination thereof. When implemented in software, firmware, middleware or microcode, the program code or code segments to perform the necessary tasks may be stored in a machine readable medium such as storage medium. A processor(s) may perform the necessary tasks. A code segment may represent a procedure, a function, a subprogram, a program, a routine, a subroutine, a module, a software package, a class, or any combination of instructions, data structures, or program statements. A code segment may be coupled to another code segment or a hardware circuit by passing and/or receiving information, data, arguments, parameters, or memory contents. Information, arguments, parameters, data, etc. may be passed, forwarded, or transmitted via any suitable means including memory sharing, message passing, token passing, network transmission, etc. 
         [0062]    While illustrative embodiments of the disclosure have been described in detail herein, it is to be understood that the inventive concepts may be otherwise variously embodied and employed, and that the appended claims are intended to be construed to include such variations, except as limited by the prior art.