Effective Utilization and Reconfiguration of Distributed Hardware Resources Using Job Management Systems

Reconfigurable hardware resources are very expensive, and yet can be underutilized. This paper describes a middleware capable of discovering underutilized computing nodes with FPGA-based accelerator boards in a networked environment. Using an extended Job management system (JMS), this middleware permits sharing reconfigurable resources at least among the members of the same organization. Traditional resources, such as CPU time of loosely coupled workstations can be shared using a variety of existing Job Management Systems (JMSs). We analyzed four of these systems, LSF, Sun Grid Engine / CODINE, PBS Pro, and Condor from the point of view of their functional characteristics and ease of extension to support reconfigurable hardware. LSF was shown to efficiently address the majority of identified requirements. The general architecture of the extended system was developed, and the exact techniques of extending LSF, CODINE, and PBS Pro to manage FPGAbased accelerator boards were identified. ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: IPPS
• Authors: Kris Gaj, Tarek A. El-Ghazawi, Nikitas A. Alexandridis, Jacek R. Radzikowski, Mohamed Taher, Frederic Vroman
• Keywords: Accelerator Boards, Distributed And Parallel Computing, FPGA-based Accelerator Boards, IPPS 2003, Reconfigurable Hardware