Program phase detection in heterogeneous multi-core processors

Abstract

In present study, in order to improve the performance and reduce the amount of power which is dissipated in heterogeneous multicore processors, the ability of detecting the program execution phases is investigated. The program's execution intervals have been classified in different phases based on their throughput and the utilization of the cores. The results of implementing the phase detection technique are investigated on a single core processor and also on a multi-core processor. To minimize the profiling overhead, an algorithm for the dynamic adjustment of the profiling intervals is presented. It is based on the behavior of the program and reduces the profiling overhead more than three fold. The results are obtained from executing multiprocessor benchmarks on a given processor. In order to show the program phases clearly, throughput and utilization of execution intervals are presented on a scatter plot. The results are presented for both fixed and variable intervals.

Energy Challenges for ICT

“…• Dynamic partial reconfiguration-A number of field programmable gate array (FPGA) manufacturers now offer dynamic partial reconfiguration that enables reconfiguration of parts of the FPGA while the other regions are still active [34].…”

Energy Efficient Multi-Core Processing

“…Phase detection is used by Jooya and Analoui to dynamically re-assigning programs for each phase to improve the performance and power dissipation of heterogeneous multi-core processors [31]. Programs are profiled in dynamic time intervals in order to detect phase changes.…”