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Posts from November 2021

Knative applies to become a CNCF incubating project

Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Image of the Knative logo

In 2018, the Knative project was founded and released by Google, and was subsequently developed in close partnership with IBM, Red Hat, VMware, and SAP. The project provides a serverless experience layer on Kubernetes, providing the building blocks you need to build and deploy modern, container-based serverless applications. Over the last three years, Knative has become the most widely-installed serverless layer on Kubernetes. More recently, Knative 1.0 was released, reaching an important milestone that was made possible thanks to the contributions and collaboration of over 600 developers in the community.

Google has worked closely with key maintainers and partners on the evolution of Knative, including conformance definition and stability ahead of the 1.0 milestone. To enable the next phase of community-driven innovation in Knative, today we have submitted Knative to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) for consideration as an incubating project, which begins the process to donate the Knative trademark, IP, and code.

As a leader in serverless computing, we’re committed to the future of Knative, and offering Knative 1.0 conformant Cloud Run and Cloud Run For Anthos products. Finding a home in the CNCF secures Knative’s long-term future and encourages continuing and open innovation. This donation recognizes the adoption and investment in Knative from the community, and will encourage further multi-vendor innovation, broader education and training.

At Google, we believe that using open source comes with a responsibility to contribute, sustain, and improve the projects that help drive innovation and make better software. We are excited to see how developers will continue to build and innovate in serverless using Knative.

By Alexandra Bush and Edd Wilder-James, Google Open Source

Open source DDR controller framework for mitigating Rowhammer

Thursday, November 11, 2021

Rowhammer is a hardware vulnerability that affects DRAM memory chips and can be exploited to modify memory contents, potentially providing root access to the system. It occurs because Dynamic RAM consists of multiple memory cells packed tightly together and specific access patterns can cause unwanted effects that propagate to nearby memory cells and cause bit-flips in cells which have not been accessed by the attacker.

The problem has been known for several years, but as shown by most recent research from Google performed with the open source platform Antmicro developed that we’ll describe in this note, it has yet to be completely solved. The tendency in DRAM manufacturing is to make the chips denser to pack more memory in the same size which inevitably results in increased interdependency between memory cells, making Rowhammer an ongoing problem.

Diagram of Rowhammer attack principle

Solutions like TRR (Target Row Refresh) introduced in newer memory chips mitigate the issue, although only in part—and attack methods like Half-Double or TRRespass keep emerging. To go beyond the all-too-often used “security through obscurity” approach, Antmicro has been helping build open source platforms which give security researchers full control over the entire technology stack, and enables them to find new solutions to emerging threats.

The Rowhammer Tester platform

The Rowhammer Tester platform was developed for and with Google, who just like Antmicro believe that open source, well documented technical infrastructure is critical in speeding up research and increasing collaboration with the industry. In this case, we wanted to enable the memory security researchers and manufacturers to have access to a flexible platform for experimenting with new types of attacks and finding better Rowhammer mitigation techniques.

Current Rowhammer test methods involve using the chip-specific MBIST (Memory Built-in Self-Test) or costly ATE (Automated Test Equipment), which means that the existing approaches are either costly, inflexible, or both. MBIST are specialized IP cores that test memory chips for errors. Although effective, they lack flexibility of changing testing algorithms hardcoded into the IP core. ATEs devices are usually used at foundries to run various tests on wafers. Access to these devices is limited and expensive; chip vendors have to rely on DFT (Design for Test) software to produce compressed test patterns, which require less access time to ATE while ensuring high test coverage.

The main goal of the project was to address those limitations, providing an FPGA-based Rowhammer testing platform that enables full control over the commands sent to the DRAM chip. This is important because DRAM memory requires specialized hardware controllers and any software-based testing approaches have to communicate with the DRAM indirectly via the controller, which pulls the researchers away from the main research subject when studying the DRAM chip behaviour itself.

Platform architecture

Diagram of platform architecture

The Rowhammer Tester consists of two parts: the FPGA gateware that is loaded to the hardware platform and a set of Python scripts used to communicate with the FPGA system from the user’s PC. Internally, all the important modules of the FPGA system are connected to a shared WishBone bus. We use an EtherBone bridge to be able to interface with the FPGA WishBone bus from the host PC. EtherBone is a protocol that allows to perform regular WishBone transactions over Ethernet. This way we can perform all of the communication between the user PC and the FPGA efficiently through an Ethernet cable.

The FPGA gateware has four main parts: a Bulk transfer module, a Payload Executor, the LiteDRAM controller, and a VexRiscv CPU. The Bulk transfer module provides an efficient way of filling and testing the whole memory contents. It supports user-configurable access and data patterns, using high-performance DMA to make use of full bandwidth offered by the LiteDRAM controller. When using the Bulk transfer module, LiteDRAM handles all the required DRAM logic, including row activation, refreshing, etc. and ensuring that all DRAM timings are met.

If more fine-grained control is required, our Rowhammer Tester provides the Payload Executor module. Payload Executor can be thought of as a simple processor that can execute our custom instruction set. Most of the instructions map directly to DRAM commands, with minimal control flow provided by the LOOP instruction. A user can compile a “program” and load it to Rowhammer Tester’s instruction SRAM, which will be then executed. To execute a program, Payload Executor will disconnect the LiteDRAM controller and send the requested command sequences directly to the DRAM chip via the PHY’s DFI interface. After execution the LiteDRAM controller gets reconnected and the contents of the memory can be inspected to search for potential bit-flips.

In our platform, we use LiteDRAM which is an open-source controller that we have been using in multiple different projects. It is part of the wider LiteX ecosystem, which is also a very popular choice for many of our FPGA projects. The controller supports different memory types (SDR, DDR, DDR2, DDR3, DDR4, …), as well as many FPGA platforms (Lattice ECP5, Xilinx Series 6, 7, UltraScale, UltraScale+, …). Since it is an open source FPGA IP core, we have complete control over its internals. That means two things: firstly, we were able to easily integrate it with the rest of our system and contribute back to improve LiteDRAM itself. Secondly, and perhaps even more importantly, groups focused on researching new memory attacking methods can modify the controller in order to expose existing vulnerabilities. The results of such experiments should essentially motivate vendors to work on mitigating the uncovered flaws, rather than rely on the “security by obscurity” based approach.

Our Rowhammer Tester is fully open source. We provide an extensive set of Python scripts for controlling the board, performing rowhammer attacks and harvesting the results. For more complex testing you can use the so-called Playbook, which is a framework that allows to describe complex testing scenarios using JSON files, providing some predefined attack configurations.

Antmicro is actively collaborating with Google and memory makers to help study the Rowhammer vulnerability, contributing to standardization efforts under the JEDEC initiative. The platform has already been used to a lot of success in state-of-the-art Rowhammer research (like the case of finding a new type of Rowhammer attack called Half-Double, as mentioned previously).

New DRAM PHYs

Initially our Rowhammer Tester targeted two easily available and price-optimized boards: Digilent Arty (DDR3, Xilinx Series7 FPGA) and Xilinx ZCU104 (DDR4, Xilinx UltraScale+ FPGA). They were a good starting point, as DDR3 and DDR4 PHYs for these boards were already supported by LiteDRAM. After the initial version of the Rowhammer Tester was ready and tested on these boards, proving the validity of the concept, the next step was to cover more memory types, some of which find their way into many devices that we interact with daily. A natural target was the LPDDR4 DRAM—a relatively new type of memory designed for low-power operation with throughputs up to 3200 MT/s. For this end, we designed our dedicated LPDDR4 Test Board, which has already been covered in a previous blog note.

LPDDR4 Test Board

The design is quite interesting because we decided to put the LPDDR4 memory chips on a module, which is against the usual practice of putting LPDDR4 directly on the PCB, as close as possible to the CPU/FPGA to minimize trace impedance. The reason was trivial—we needed the platform to be able to test many memory types interchangeably without having to desolder and resolder parts, using complicated interposers or other niche techniques—the platform is supposed to be open and approachable to all.

Alongside the hardware platform we had to develop a new LPDDR4 PHY IP as LiteDRAM didn’t have support for LPDDR4 at that time, resolving problems related to the differences between LPDDR4 and previously supported DRAM types, such as new training modes. After a phase of verification and testing on our hardware, the newly implemented PHY has been contributed back to LiteDRAM.

What’s next?

The project does not stop there; we are already working on an LPDDR5 PHY for next-gen low power memory support. This latest low-power memory standard published by JEDEC poses some new and interesting challenges including a new clocking architecture and operation on an even lower voltage. As of today, LPDDR5 chips are hardly available on the market as a bleeding-edge technology, but we are continuing our work to prepare LPDDR5 support for our future hardware platform in simulation using custom and vendor provided simulation models.

The fact that our platform has already been successfully used to demonstrate new types of Rowhammer attacks proves that open source test platforms can make a difference, and we are pleased to see a growing collaborative ecosystem around the project in a joint effort to ensure that we find robust and transparent mitigation techniques for all variants of Rowhammer for the foreseeable future.

Ultimately, our work with the Rowhammer Tester platform shows that by using open source, vendor-neutral IP, tools and hardware, we can create better platforms for more effective research and product development. In the future, building on the success of the FPGA version, our work as part of the CHIPS Alliance will most likely lead to demonstrating the LiteDRAM controller in ASIC form, unlocking even more performance based on the same solid platform.

If you are interested in state of the art, high-speed FPGA I/O and extreme customizability that open source FPGA blocks can offer, get in touch with Antmicro at contact@antmicro.com to hire development services to develop your next product.

Originally posted on the Antmicro blog.


By guest author Michael Gielda, Antmicro

Expanding Google Summer of Code in 2022

Wednesday, November 10, 2021

We are pleased to announce that in 2022 we’re broadening our scope of Google Summer of Code (GSoC) with exciting new updates to the program.

For 17 years, GSoC has focused on bringing new open source contributors into OSS communities big and small. GSoC has brought over 18,000 university students from 112 countries together with over 17K mentors from 746 open source organizations.

At its heart, GSoC is a mentorship program where people interested in learning more about open source are welcomed into our open source communities by excited mentors ready to help them learn and grow as developers. The goal is to have these new contributors stay involved in open source communities long after their Google Summer of Code program is over.

Over the course of GSoC’s 17 years, open source has grown and evolved, and we’ve realized that the program needs to evolve as well. With that in mind, we have several major updates to the program coming in 2022, aimed at better meeting the needs of our open source communities and providing more flexibility to both projects and contributors so that people from all walks of life can find, join and contribute to great open source communities.

Expanding eligibility

Beginning in 2022, we are opening the program up to all newcomers of open source that are 18 years and older. The program will no longer be solely focused on university students or recent graduates. We realize there are many folks that could benefit from the GSoC program that are at various stages of their career, recent career changers, self-taught, those returning to the workforce, etc. so we wanted to allow these folks the opportunity to participate in GSoC.

We expect many students to continue applying to the program (which we encourage!), yet we wanted to provide excited individuals who want to get into open source—but weren’t sure how to get started or whether open source communities would welcome their newbie contributions—with a place to start.

Many people can benefit from mentorship programs like GSoC and we want to welcome more folks into open source.

Multiple Sizes of Projects

This year we introduced the concept of a medium sized project in response to the many distractions folks were dealing with during the pandemic. This adjustment was beneficial for many participants and organizations but we also heard feedback that the larger, more complex projects were a better fit for others. In the spirit of flexibility, we are going to support both medium sized projects (~175 hours) and large projects (~350 hours) in 2022.

One of our goals is to find ways to get more people from different backgrounds into open source which means meeting people where they are at and understanding that not everyone can devote an entire summer to coding.

Increased Flexibility of Timing for Projects

For 2022, we are allowing for considerable flexibility in the timing for the program. You can spread the project out over a longer period of time and you can even switch to a longer timeframe mid-program if life happens. Rather than a mandatory 12-week program that runs from June – August with everyone required to finish their projects by the end of the 12th week, we are opening it up so mentors and their GSoC Contributors can decide together if they want to extend the deadline for the project up to 22 weeks.
Image with text reads 'Google Summer of Code'

Interested in Applying to GSoC?

We will announce the GSoC 2022 program timeline soon.

Open Source Organizations

Does your open source project want to learn more about how to apply to be a mentoring organization? This is a mentorship program focused on welcoming new contributors into your community and helping them learn best practices that will help them be long term OSS contributors. A key factor is having plenty of mentors excited about teaching newcomers about open source.

Read the mentor guide, to learn more about what it means to be a mentor organization, how to prepare your community, creating appropriate project ideas (175 hour and 350 hour projects), and tips for preparing your application.

Want to be a GSoC Contributor?

Are you a potential GSoC Contributor interested in learning how to prepare for the 2022 GSoC program? It’s never too early to start thinking about your proposal or about what type of open source organization you may want to work with. Read through the student/contributor guide for important tips on preparing your proposal and what to consider if you wish to apply for the program in 2022. You can also get inspired by checking out the 199 organizations that participated in Google Summer of Code 2021, as well as the projects that students worked on.

We encourage you to explore other resources and you can learn more on the program website.

Please spread the word to your friends as we hope these updates to the program will help more excited folks apply to be GSoC Contributors and mentoring organizations in GSoC 2022!


By Stephanie Taylor, Program Manager, Google Open Source

qsim integrates with NVIDIA cuQuantum SDK to accelerate quantum circuit simulations on NVIDIA GPUs

Tuesday, November 9, 2021

To make quantum computers useful, we need algorithms which cleverly use the unique properties of quantum hardware to solve problems intractable on classical computers. High performance quantum circuit simulation helps researchers and developers around the world build and test novel quantum algorithms. We recently launched major new features in qsim, Google Quantum AI’s open source quantum circuit simulator, that make it more performant, intuitive, and realistic.

Today, we are excited to announce an integration between qsim and the NVIDIA cuQuantum SDK. This integration will enable qsim users to make the most of GPUs when developing quantum algorithms and applications. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang announced the integration between Google Quantum AI's open source software stack and NVIDIA's cuQuantum SDK in the NVIDIA GTC conference keynote this morning.

To use the cuQuantum SDK with qsim, users can follow the usual workflow for simulating quantum circuits on a virtual machine, enabling cuQuantum in their simulation command.

Moving image depicting steps to create a quantum circuit setup Google Compute Engine and simulate circuit with qsim(cuQuantum SDK enabled) on GCP

Get started with quantum algorithm development using qsim+cuQuantum and the rest of the Google Quantum AI open source stack here.



By Sergei Isakov, Catherine Vollgraff Heidweiller (Google Quantum AI)


Upgrading qsim, Google Quantum AI's Open Source Quantum Simulator

Friday, November 5, 2021

Quantum computing represents a fundamental shift in computation and gives us the opportunity to make important classically intractable problems solvable. To realize the full potential of quantum computing, we first need to build an error-corrected quantum computer. While we are actively working on our hardware roadmap, today’s quantum hardware is expected to remain a scarce resource. This makes software for simulating quantum circuits and emulating quantum hardware a critical enabler for quantum algorithm development.

To help researchers and developers around the world develop quantum algorithms right now, we are making qsim, our open source quantum circuit simulator, more performant and intuitive, and more “hardware-like”. Our recently published white paper provides a description of the theory and software optimizations that underpin qsim.

Launched in 2020, qsim allows quantum algorithm researchers to simulate quantum circuits developed with our algorithm libraries such as TensorFlow Quantum and OpenFermion, and our quantum programming framework Cirq.

With the upgraded version of qsim, users can back their simulations with high performance processors such as GPUs and ultramem CPU’s via Google Cloud, and distribute simulations over multiple compute nodes.
Moving image of steps to create, setup, and simulate circuit with qsim on GCP

The enriched noisy simulation featureset provides researchers with a “hardware-like” simulation experience for developing applications for the Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum Computers (also referred to as NISQ hardware) that exists today. Trajectory simulation speeds up noisy simulations with an efficient stochastic procedure which replaces noiseless gates with quantum channels. A new software routine1 for approximating Google Quantum AI NISQ processor specific hardware noise in simulations, can be used by any developer to test and iterate on algorithm prototypes containing up to 32 qubits. Simulation with processor-specific approximate NISQ noise is expected to advance NISQ applications research, because it allows researchers to account for the dominant hardware error mechanisms in real NISQ devices when prototyping algorithms—using error measurements performed on Google quantum processors.

Get started with quantum algorithm development using the Google Quantum AI open source stack here.



By Sergei Isakov, Dvir Kafri, Orion Martin and Catherine Vollgraff Heidweiller – Google Quantum AI


Notes


  1. Public code release for this feature is coming up  


Efficient emulation of quantum circuits for chemistry

Thursday, November 4, 2021

The Google Quantum AI team spends a lot of time developing simulators for quantum hardware and quantum circuits. These simulators are invaluable tools for our entire quantum computing stack. We use them for everything, from algorithm design to defining the boundaries of beyond classical computation, having to do with building useful quantum computers. But there are limits to what we can simulate efficiently. In general, simulating quantum systems with a classical computer incurs exponential cost in CPU time or memory space. To fight the exponential growth we develop more efficient algorithms allowing us to further our ability to simulate large quantum systems.

In this post we describe joint work with our collaborators at QSimulate to develop the Fermionic Quantum Emulator, a fast emulator of quantum circuits that simulates the behavior of electrons. Efficiency gains in this particular area are exciting because simulating fermions is known to be challenging and an area we suspect to have a substantial quantum advantage. The Fermionic Quantum Emulator (FQE) adds to our portfolio of simulators for quantum hardware, quantum error correction, and quantum circuits and provides the capability to simulate even large quantum systems in an effort to evaluate beyond classical physics simulations. The emulator slots into our set of open source software tools for quantum information and is completely interoperable with OpenFermion. The code is Python based with C-extensions for computational hotspots letting us gain performance without sacrificing readability or ease of distribution. For complete details, see the open access publication or check out the code!

Prelude: The cost of quantum simulation

To store the vector of numbers at double precision representing the wavefunction of 26 qubits requires approximately 1 Gigabyte memory. By the time we add 10 more qubits to our calculations we need a Terabyte of memory. In terms of simulations of molecules or materials, 36 qubits is quite small–translating to a modest accuracy simulation of the electrons in diatomic or small molecules. Simulations of electrons in more complicated molecules can require hundreds of qubits to accurately represent nature and provide the scientific insight chemists need to reason about reaction mechanisms. What this means for quantum algorithm developers who focus on physics simulation is that even testing algorithms at a small scale prior to running them on a quantum device can be a serious computational undertaking.

We can temper the exponential scaling of direct simulation by exploiting physical symmetries when we know our circuits are simulating a particular type of quantum particle. If we allow ourselves to move away from direct simulation of the quantum device and relax our simulation requirements to emulation we get a lot more wiggle room in terms of algorithm design. The Fermionic Quantum Emulator takes this approach to circuit simulation and achieves substantial computational advantage over generic quantum circuit simulators that do not make physical symmetry considerations.

The Fermionic Quantum Emulator:

The Fermionic Quantum Emulator (FQE) is a state vector simulator that takes advantage of common symmetries of fermionic spin-1/2 systems which can drastically reduce the memory required to represent a quantum state in memory. Using a symmetry-reduced wavefunction representation allows us to make further algorithmic improvements when simulating arbitrary fermionic generators (many-body quantum gates) and standard non-relativistic chemical Hamiltonians. These improvements are obtained by adapting algorithms developed in the theoretical chemistry community for exact fermionic simulations.

For a system where the number of electrons is equal to half the total qubits required to simulate the system we see modest improvements and can store a 36 qubit wavefunction with 37 Gigabytes of memory–substantial savings when considering the qubit wavefunction without symmetries considered requires 1000 Gigabytes. For lower filling systems we see even more substantial advantages. To emphasize this point we plot the ratio of the sizes required to represent wavefunctions in the symmetry-reduced representation used by FQE and the more expensive qubit representation.

Graph showing the ratio of requirements for circuit simulation when considering physical symmetries versus direct simulation of qubits
The ratio of memory requirements for circuit simulation when considering physical symmetries versus direct simulation of qubits. Chemistry and materials Hamiltonians commute with the number and spin operators so we can focus on simulating the wavefunction in only the relevant symmetry sectors. As shown by the yellow line (quarter filling) this can lead to substantial savings. For a quarter filling wavefunction on 48 qubits (24 orbitals) we would need 290 Gb and a qubit simulation would require 4.5 Petabytes.

Emulating quantum circuits pertaining to fermionic dynamics allows us to be more clever with our simulation algorithms instead of a direct simulation of the quantum gates. For example, instead of translating fermionic generators to qubit generators using standard techniques the FQE provides routines for directly evolving common circuit primitives and arbitrary fermionic generators. The structure of common algorithmic primitives, such as basis rotations or diagonal Coulomb operators, allows us to write very fast routines for evolving symmetry-reduced wavefunctions. Below we plot the performance of one of these primitives (basis rotations) and compare the performance of FQE with a highly optimized Qsim program written in C++. In both a single threaded and multithreaded regime the FQE outperforms Qsim by at least an order of magnitude; clearly demonstrating that physics and symmetry considerations coupled with algorithmic improvements can have substantial computational advantages.

CPU Walk clock time for the the basis rotation primitive C-kernel primitive versus an equivalent circuit evolution time with Qsim.
CPU Walk clock time for the the basis rotation primitive C-kernel primitive versus an equivalent circuit evolution time with Qsim.

The code, getting involved, and future directions:

The FQE is a python package with easily extensible modules for maximum flexibility. We have accelerated some computational hotspots with C-kernels and provide users the ability to easily toggle between these two modes. The C-kernels are further accelerated with OpenMP. Installation uses the standard python C-extension workflow and does not require specific linking to BLAS routines. Pointers to these routines are obtained from Numpy and Scipy lowering burden programmers and computational physicists using the software.

The FQE is completely interoperable with OpenFermion but can also be used as a standalone fermionic simulator. We have built in functionality that generates many standard sets of observables for fermionic simulation (arbitrary expectation values and reduced density matrices). The FQE also has custom routines for standard quantum chemistry Hamiltonians that further exploit the symmetry in a spin-restricted setting for more computational efficiency.

The FQE is, and will remain, Apache 2 open source. We welcome pull requests, issues, or general commentary on how we can improve the emulator. Our hope is that you can use the FQE to accelerate explorations of quantum algorithms, as a general purpose tool for simulating time-dynamics of fermions, and as the start of a family of methods for emulating fermionic circuits. To get started check out this tutorial and this example on simulating spin-charge separation in the Fermi Hubbard model.

We depend on simulations to understand which problems quantum computers may be able to solve, and when. The FQE enables us to stretch further into the realm of difficult simulations of fermionic systems and increase our research velocity. Looking forward, the FQE is the start of a general framework for extending various qubit simulation techniques to the fermionic setting which will help us define the frontier of quantum computational relevancy and quantum simulation advances.

By Nicholas Rubin - Senior Research Scientist
 



Announcing Knative 1.0!

Tuesday, November 2, 2021



Today, the Knative project released version 1.0, reaching an important milestone that was possible thanks to the contributions and collaboration of over 600 developers. Over the last three years, Knative became the most widely-installed serverless layer on Kubernetes.

The Knative project was released by Google in July 2018, with the vision to systemize best practices in cloud native application development, with a focus on three areas: building containers, serving and scaling workloads, and eventing. It delivers an essential set of components to build and run serverless applications on Kubernetes, allowing webhooks and services to scale automatically, even down to zero. Open-sourcing this technology provided the industry with essential base primitives that are shared by all. Knative was developed in close collaboration with IBM, Red Hat, SAP, VMWare, and over 50 different companies. Google offers Cloud Run for Anthos for managed Knative serving that will be Knative 1.0 conformant.

The road to 1.0

Autoscaling (including scaling to zero), revision tracking, and abstractions for developers were some of the early goals of Knative. In addition to delivering on those goals, the project also incorporated support for multiple HTTP routing layers, support for multiple storage layers for Eventing concepts with common Subscription methods, and designed a “Duck types” abstraction to allow processing arbitrary Kubernetes resources that have common fields, to name a few changes.

Knative is now available at 1.0, and while the API is closed for changes, its definition is publicly available so anyone can demonstrate Knative conformance. This stable API allows customers and vendors to support portability of applications, and establishes a new cloud native developer architecture.

Get started with Knative 1.0

Install Knative 1.0 using the documentation on the website. Learn more about the 1.0 release on the Knative blog, and at the Knative community meetup on November 17, 2021, where you'll hear about the latest changes coming with Knative 1.0 from maintainer Ville Aikas. Join the Knative Slack space to ask questions and troubleshoot issues as you get acquainted with the project.

By María Cruz, Program Manager – Google Open Source
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