AI Hardware Control Hierarchy for Asynchronous Thread Synchronization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing AI hardware programming methods lack scalability and efficient synchronization mechanisms, leading to suboptimal performance in training and inference tasks.
Innovation Solution
A hierarchical programming model with a control thread hierarchy that allows asynchronous command execution and synchronization between threads, including control threads, compute threads, and memory threads, utilizing shared partitioned memories and synchronization primitives for efficient data management and operation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If a flat control hierarchy is used for programming AI hardware, then the programming model is simpler to implement, but scalability and performance are limited
Solution Approach 1:
The control hierarchy is segmented into multiple hierarchical levels (root control threads, intermediate control threads, and leaf control threads). Each level manages specific subsets of processing resources, allowing the system to scale by adding more levels or threads at each level without overwhelming a single control structure. This segmentation enables better organization of complex AI workloads while maintaining manageable complexity at each hierarchical level.
Solution Approach 2:
The invention transitions from a two-dimensional flat control structure to a multi-dimensional hierarchical control structure. By adding the vertical dimension of hierarchy levels, the system can manage more processing threads and resources without proportionally increasing the complexity of individual control threads. This dimensional expansion allows scalable performance improvement while keeping each control thread's complexity manageable.
2Ease of operation
If synchronous execution is used for control threads, then synchronization is easier to manage, but execution efficiency and throughput are reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The hierarchical control threads use feedback mechanisms through command queues and synchronization primitives. Lower-level control threads receive commands from higher-level threads and provide feedback on execution status. This feedback loop enables asynchronous execution where threads can proceed independently when ready, improving throughput while maintaining proper synchronization through structured feedback channels rather than rigid synchronous coordination.
Solution Approach 2:
Command queues act as intermediaries between control threads at different hierarchical levels. Instead of direct synchronous interaction, threads communicate through these intermediary queues, allowing asynchronous command passing. The synchronization primitives serve as mediators that coordinate access to shared resources without requiring threads to wait synchronously, thus maintaining ease of synchronization management while enabling efficient asynchronous execution.
3Productivity
If more control threads are added to improve scalability, then processing capacity increases, but system complexity and coordination overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
By segmenting the control hierarchy into multiple levels, the invention allows adding more control threads without proportionally increasing overall system complexity. Each hierarchical level manages a subset of threads, distributing the coordination burden. This segmentation enables processing capacity to scale with thread count while keeping individual control threads and their management complexity manageable through the hierarchical structure.
4Productivity
If asynchronous execution is enabled for control threads, then execution efficiency improves, but synchronization complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
Synchronization primitives serve as intermediaries that manage asynchronous coordination between control threads. These primitives provide standardized mechanisms for threads to signal completion, request data, and coordinate access to shared resources without requiring complex custom synchronization logic in each thread. This intermediary approach maintains execution efficiency through asynchronous operation while controlling synchronization complexity through reusable, well-defined primitives.
Data Source
AI summary
A system includes a set of lower-level control threads. The system also includes a higher-level control thread configured to receive a command from a device, generate a set of commands based on the command, and provide the set of commands to a subset of the set of lower-level control threads. A lower-level control thread in the subset of the set of lower-level control threads is configured to instruct, based on a particular command in the set of commands, a subset of a plurality of processing threads to perform a set of operations.