Integrated Architectural Level Power-Performance Modeling Toolkit

Abstract:

We are currently developing a robust, integrated infrastructure for studying power-performance issues across a range of systems.  By leveraging a common ISA and shared simulation infrastructure, we will be able to perform apples-to-apples comparisons between processors intended for specific design spaces.  For example, recently there has been significant attention brought to the idea of reusing microprocessor cores in multiple design spaces.  In particular, there has been much interest in exploring the possibility of using multiple low-power, embedded processors in blade systems or SMP-on-a-chip designs for server workloads.  There has also been interest in taking server-class microprocessors and bringing them into use in lower-end systems.  For example, the processor core of the original POWER4 microprocessor has recently been introduced as the PowerPC970 -- a 64-bit microprocessor for use in blade servers and desktop (and potentially laptop) systems. We utilize the MET/Turandot toolkit originally developed at IBM TJ Watson Research Center as the underlying PowerPC microarchitecture performance simulator [3].  Turandot is flexible enough to model a broad range of microarchitectures and has undergone extensive validation [3].  In addition,  Turandot has been augmented with power models to explore power-performance tradeoffs in an internal IBM tool called PowerTimer [4]. Turandot is freely available to the research community through licensing arrangements with IBM, and we are currently working with IBM to develop an external, public release of PowerTimer. 
Last updated on 05/03/2022