The goal of FastPath is to bring together researchers and practitioners
involved in cross-stack hardware/software performance analysis, modeling,
and evaluation of workload optimized systems. With microprocessor clock
speeds being held constant, optimizing systems around specific workloads
is an increasingly attractive means to improve performance.
More precisely, workload optimized systems have hardware
and/or software specifically designed to run well for a
particular application or application class. The types and
components of workload optimized systems vary, but a partial list
includes traditional CPUs assisted with accelerators
(ASICs, FPGAs, GPUs), memory accelerators, I/O accelerators,
hybrid systems, converged infrastructure, and IT appliances.