TALM: A Hybrid Execution Model with Distributed Speculation Support

Parallel programming has become mandatory to fully exploit the potential of modern CPUs. The data-flow model provides a natural way to exploit parallelism. However, traditional data-flow programming is not trivial: specifying dependencies and control using fine-grained tasks (such as instructions) can be complex and present unwanted overheads. To address this issue we have built a coarse-grained data-flow model with speculative execution support to be used on top of widespread architectures, implemented as a hybrid Von Neumanm/data-flow execution system. We argue that speculative execution fits naturally with the data-flow model. Using speculative execution liberates the programmer to consider only the main dependencies, and still allows correct data-flow execution of coarse-grained tasks. Moreover, our speculation mechanism does not demand centralised control, which is a key feature for upcoming many-core systems, where scalability has become an important concern. An initial study on a artificial bank server application suggests that there is a wide range of scenarios where speculation can be very effective.