Title
Orion: a power-performance simulator for interconnection networks
Abstract
With the prevalence of server blades and systems-on-a-chip (SoCs), interconnection networks are becoming an important part of the microprocessor landscape. However, there is limited tool support available for their design. While performance simulators have been built that enable performance estimation while varying network parameters, these cover only one metric of interest in modern designs. System power consumption is increasingly becoming equally, if not more important than performance. It is now critical to get detailed power-performance tradeoff information early in the microarchitectural design cycle. This is especially so as interconnection networks consume a significant fraction of total system power. It is exactly this gap that the work presented in this paper aims to fill.We present Orion, a power-performance interconnection network simulator that is capable of providing detailed power characteristics, in addition to performance characteristics, to enable rapid power-performance trade-offs at the architectural-level. This capability is provided within a general framework that builds a simulator starting from a microarchitectural specification of the interconnection network. A key component of this construction is the architectural-level parameterized power models that we have derived as part of this effort. Using component power models and a synthesized efficient power (and performance) simulator, a microarchitect can rapidly explore the design space. As case studies, we demonstrate the use of Orion in determining optimal system parameters, in examining the effect of diverse traffic conditions, as well as evaluating new network microarchitectures. In each of the above, the ability to simultaneously monitor power and performance is key in determining suitable microarchitectures.
Year
DOI
Venue
2002
10.1109/MICRO.2002.1176258
MICRO
Keywords
Field
DocType
total system power,performance simulator,detailed power characteristic,interconnection network,synthesized efficient power,architectural-level parameterized power model,power-performance simulator,performance characteristic,system power consumption,performance estimation,component power model,system on a chip,network synthesis,switches
Parameterized complexity,Computer science,Simulation,Network synthesis filters,Power system simulator for engineering,Parallel computing,Microprocessor,Network simulation,Total system power,Real-time computing,Interconnection,Energy consumption
Conference
ISSN
ISBN
Citations 
1072-4451
0-7695-1859-1
421
PageRank 
References 
Authors
29.12
20
4
Search Limit
100421
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Hangsheng Wang186159.21
Xinping Zhu252638.36
Li-Shiuan Peh35077398.57
Sharad Malik47766691.24