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Efficient Parallel Implementation of Cellular Automata and Stencil Computations in Current Processors

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Advances in Computing, Informatics, Networking and Cybersecurity

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 289))

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Abstract

A Cellular Automaton is a bio-inspired discrete model of computation with multiple applications, consisting of a regular grid of cells that have different states along time. Our research group at the University of Seville (Spain) collaborated in the past with Prof. Mohammad S. Obaidat in the fusion of Cellular Automata (CA) with another bio-inspired approach, the Address-Event-Representation (AER) neuromorphic communication protocol, for implementing a vision filter based on 3\(\,\times \,\)3 convolutions [22]. In the last years, our group has continued working on the optimization of CA implementations in current high-performance computational systems. In this chapter, several of these optimizations will be described, focusing on those especially aimed at current processors, including hardware alternatives (e.g. GPUs, BTBs, etc.), different forms of parallelism such as instruction-level parallelism, thread-level parallelism, data-level parallelism, as well as software approaches (such as ‘if-else’ statement elimination, loop unrolling, data pipelining and blocking, etc.). The effect of these optimizations will be qualitatively illustrated by means of the Roofline model, considering simple CAs such as the well-known Game-of-Life (GOL), which has been extensively used to explore CA characteristics. This CA was invented by John Horton Conway, an English mathematician that recently died of complications from COVID-19, so we want this case-study to serve also as a tribute to him.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the following research project of Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad, Gobierno de España (MINECO) and the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) of Spain, cofinanced by FEDER funds (EU): MABICAP (Bio-inspired machines on High Performance Computing platforms: a multidisciplinary approach, TIN2017-89842P), Par-HoT (Parallel Data Processing based on Homotopy Connectivity: Applications to Stereoscopic Vision and Biomedical Data, PID2019-110455GB-I00).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Architecture and Technology, Universidad de Sevilla, Seville, Spain

    Fernando Diaz-del-Rio, Daniel Cagigas-Muñiz, Jose Luis Guisado-Lizar & Jose Luis Sevillano-Ramos

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  1. Fernando Diaz-del-Rio
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  2. Daniel Cagigas-Muñiz
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  3. Jose Luis Guisado-Lizar
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  4. Jose Luis Sevillano-Ramos
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jose Luis Sevillano-Ramos .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Petros Nicopolitidis

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, West Bengal, India

    Sudip Misra

  3. Department of Computer Science, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, NS, Canada

    Laurence T. Yang

  4. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Bernard Zeigler

  5. Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China

    Zhaolng Ning

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Diaz-del-Rio, F., Cagigas-Muñiz, D., Guisado-Lizar, J.L., Sevillano-Ramos, J.L. (2022). Efficient Parallel Implementation of Cellular Automata and Stencil Computations in Current Processors. In: Nicopolitidis, P., Misra, S., Yang, L.T., Zeigler, B., Ning, Z. (eds) Advances in Computing, Informatics, Networking and Cybersecurity. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 289. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87049-2_4

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