Dynamic vectorization for heterogeneous multi-core processors with single instruction set – DYVE

Most of today's computer systems have CPU cores and GPU cores on the same chip. Though both are general-purpose, CPUs and GPUs still have fundamentally different software stacks and programming models, starting from the instruction set architecture. Indeed, GPUs rely on static vectorization of parallel applications, which demands vector instruction sets instead of CPU scalar instruction sets. We advocate a disruptive change in both CPU and GPU architecture by introducing Dynamic Vectorization at the hardware level.

Dynamic Vectorization will combine the efficiency of GPUs with the programmability and compatibility of CPUs by bringing them together into heterogeneous general-purpose multi-cores. It will enable processor architectures of the next decades to provide (1) high performance on sequential program sections thanks to latency-optimized cores, (2) energy-efficiency on parallel sections thanks to throughput-optimized cores, (3) programmability, binary compatibility and portability.