Form Follows Function -- Do algorithms and applications challenge or drag behind the hardware evolution?

TL;DR

The paper summarizes discussions from a workshop on how software and hardware co-evolve, highlighting the lack of explicit co-design and proposing idioms to better integrate hardware and software development for improved system design.

Contribution

It identifies the current cycle of hardware-software co-evolution as suboptimal and suggests development idioms to enhance integration without traditional co-design approaches.

Findings

Software development often follows hardware trends but influences hardware design.

The co-evolution cycle is not proactively steered, leading to inefficiencies.

Three development idioms are proposed to improve hardware-software integration.

Abstract

We summarise some of the key statements made at the workshop Form Follows Function at ISC High Performance 2016. The summary highlights what type of co-design the presented projects experience; often in the absence of an explicit co-design agenda. Their software development picks up hardware trends but it also influences the hardware development. Observations illustrate that this cycle not always is optimal for both sides as it is not proactively steered. Key statements characterise ideas how it might be possible to integrate both hardware and software creation closer to the best of both worlds---again even without classic co-design in mind where new pieces of hardware are created. The workshop finally identified three development idioms that might help to improve software and system design with respect to emerging hardware.