Elastic Silicon Interconnects: Abstracting Communication in Accelerator Design

TL;DR

This paper advocates for higher-level abstraction in accelerator communication design, aiming to improve correctness, productivity, and performance for both RTL and high-level language developers.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of elastic silicon interconnects to abstract communication, addressing the gap in research and tooling for accelerator communication.

Findings

Higher abstraction levels can improve design correctness.

Elevated abstraction enhances productivity for designers.

Potential performance benefits from abstracted communication layers.

Abstract

Communication is an important part of accelerator design, though it is under researched and under developed. Today, designers often face relatively low-level communication tools requiring them to design straightforward but error-prone plumbing. In this paper, we argue that raising the level of abstraction could yield correctness, productivity, and performance benefits not only for RTL-level designers but also for high level language developers.