Accelerated Charged Particle Tracking with Graph Neural Networks on FPGAs

30 Nov 2020 · Aneesh Heintz, Vesal Razavimaleki, Javier Duarte, Gage DeZoort, Isobel Ojalvo, Savannah Thais, Markus Atkinson, Mark Neubauer, Lindsey Gray, Sergo Jindariani, Nhan Tran, Philip Harris, Dylan Rankin, Thea Aarrestad, Vladimir Loncar, Maurizio Pierini, Sioni Summers, Jennifer Ngadiuba, Mia Liu, Edward Kreinar, Zhenbin Wu ·

We develop and study FPGA implementations of algorithms for charged particle tracking based on graph neural networks. The two complementary FPGA designs are based on OpenCL, a framework for writing programs that execute across heterogeneous platforms, and hls4ml, a high-level-synthesis-based compiler for neural network to firmware conversion. We evaluate and compare the resource usage, latency, and tracking performance of our implementations based on a benchmark dataset. We find a considerable speedup over CPU-based execution is possible, potentially enabling such algorithms to be used effectively in future computing workflows and the FPGA-based Level-1 trigger at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.

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