Step 3: Identify Device Parallelization Needs - 2022.1 English

Vitis Unified Software Platform Documentation: Application Acceleration Development (UG1393)

Document ID
UG1393
Release Date
2022-05-25
Version
2022.1 English

After the functions to be accelerated have been identified and the overall acceleration goals have been established, the next step is to determine what level of parallelization is needed to meet the goals.

The factory analogy is again helpful to understand what parallelism is possible within kernels.

As described, the assembly line allows the progressive and simultaneous processing of inputs. In hardware, this kind of parallelism is called pipelining. The number of stations on the assembly line corresponds to the number of stages in the hardware pipeline.

Another dimension of parallelism within kernels is the ability to process multiple samples at the same time. This is like putting not just one, but multiple samples on the conveyer belt at the same time. To accommodate this, the assembly line stations are customized to process multiple samples in parallel. This is effectively defining the width of the datapath within the kernel.

Performance can be further scaled by increasing the number of assembly lines. This can be accomplished by putting multiple assembly lines in a factory, and also by building multiple identical factories with one or more assembly lines in each of them.

The developer needs to determine which combination of parallelization techniques is most effective at meeting the acceleration goals.