Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences

We propose a machine architecture that integrates programmable logic into key components of the system with the goal of customizing architectural mechanisms and policies to match an application. This approach presents an improvement over traditional approach of exploiting programmable logic as a separate co-processor by preserving machine usability through software and over traditional computer architecture by providing application-specific hardware assists. We present two case studies of architectural customization to enhance latency tolerance and efficiently utilize network bisection on multiprocessors for sparse matrix computations. We demonstrate that using application-specific hardware assists and policies can provide substantial improvements in performance on a per application basis. Based on these preliminary results, we propose that an application-driven machine customization provides a promising approach to achieve high performance and combat performance fragility.