Assimilation Dynamic Network (ADN)

The Assimilation Dynamic Network (ADN) is a dynamic inter-processor communication network that spans heterogeneous processor architectures, unifying components, significantly improving flexibility, efficiency, and overall usability. ADN has the following main features: - A uniform programming model for intra-platform communication among heterogeneous processing resources that creates a homogeneous programming environment. - A novel networking layer encapsulates and abstracts hardware resources (e.g. a mixture of multicore CPUs, FPGAs, ASICs) with a uniform communication method & format across the physical resources. - Extends memory resources and network connectivity to facilitate flexible, efficient partitioning and placement of functionality across the heterogeneous physical resources. - Enables gradual optimization during development and beyond, e.g. functions that initially ran on CPUs are moved to FPGA cores for optimization while still remaining in the same application software framework. Technical Objectives and Milestones for the Phase II project: - Establishing an ADN specification - Developing ADN libraries for HDL and C designs - Expanding hardware support for multicore CPU, FPGA and ASIC platforms - Developing tools to facilitate ADN designs - Demonstrating and evaluating ADN use in an example application - Releasing ADN libraries and tools