Custom Floating-Point Computations for the Optimization of ODE Solvers on FPGA

Mean Field Analysis and Markovian Agents are powerful techniques for modeling complex systems of distributed interacting objects, for which efficient analytical and numerical solution algorithms can be implemented through linear systems of ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Solving such ODE systems on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) is a promising alternative to traditional CPUand GPU-based approaches, especially in terms of energy consumption; however, the floating-point computations required are generally thought to be slow and inefficient when implemented on FPGA. In this paper, we demonstrate the use of High-Level Synthesis with automated customization of lowprecision floating-point calculations, obtaining hardware accelerators for ODE solvers with improved quality of results and minimal output error. The proposed methodology does not require any manual rewriting of the solver code, but it remains prohibitively slow to evaluate any possible floating-point configuration through logic synthesis; in the future, we will thus implement automated design space exploration methods able to suggest promising configurations under user-defined accuracy and performance constraints.