Fletcher: A framework to efficiently integrate FPGA accelerators with apache arrow

J.W. Peltenburg, Jeroen Van Straten, Lars Wijtemans, Lars Van Leeuwen, Zaid Al-Ars, Peter Hofstee

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volumeConference contributionScientificpeer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)
219 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Modern big data systems are highly heterogeneous. The components found in their many layers of abstraction are often implemented in a wide variety of programming languages and frameworks. Due to language implementation differences, interfaces between these components, including hardware accelerated components, are often burdened by serialization overhead. Serialization bandwidth of many high-level language frameworks is an order of magnitude lower than contemporary FPGA accelerator interface bandwidth, especially when objects are small but numerous. Therefore, serialization bounds the effective end-to-end performance of FPGA-accelerated solutions integrated with applications written in high-level languages. The Apache Arrow project defines a language agnostic columnar in-memory format optimized for big data applications, preventing the need to serialize or even make copies during communication between components. To enable FPGA accelerators to benefit from the approach of Arrow, we first investigate the properties of its format in relation to hardware interfaces and establish that the format is usable. Second, we present the Fletcher framework, that automatically generates highly efficient hardware interfaces to access data of potentially complex, nested Arrow data types. Our approach allows 11 of the languages supported by Apache Arrow libraries to efficiently communicate large data sets with FPGA accelerators at system bandwidth. Furthermore, on the hardware side, the generated interfaces deliver any data type that Arrow can represent as groups of streams, providing a better starting point for data-flow-oriented kernel development, compared to manually creating custom interfaces to address issues related to pointer arithmetic, bus word misalignment and latency. For example applications, as measured on an AWS EC2 F1 and CAPI2-enabled POWER9 system, accelerated end-to-end application performance improves by 1.3x-49x compared to a hardware accelerated solution that still requires serialization.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 29th International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications, FPL 2019
EditorsIoannis Sourdis, Christos-Savvas Bouganis, Carlos Alvarez, Leonel Antonio Toledo Diaz, Pedro Valero, Xavier Martorell
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Pages270-277
Number of pages8
ISBN (Electronic)9781728148847
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Sept 2019
Event29th International Conferenceon Field-Programmable Logic and Applications, FPL 2019 - Barcelona, Spain
Duration: 9 Sept 201913 Sept 2019

Publication series

NameProceedings - 29th International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications, FPL 2019

Conference

Conference29th International Conferenceon Field-Programmable Logic and Applications, FPL 2019
Country/TerritorySpain
CityBarcelona
Period9/09/1913/09/19

Keywords

  • Accelerator bandwidth
  • Apache Arrow
  • Big data systems
  • FPGA acceleration
  • Serialization

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