Paper Info
Title
Quantitative characterization of the software layer of a HW/SW co-designed processor
Abstract
HW/SW co-designed processors currently have a renewed interest due to their capability to boost performance without running into the power and complexity walls. By employing a software layer that performs dynamic binary translation and applies aggressive optimizations through exploiting the runtime application behavior, these hybrid architectures provide better performance/watt. However, a poorly designed software layer can result in significant translation/optimization overheads that may offset its benefits. This work presents a detailed characterization of the software layer of a HW/SW co-designed processor using a variety of benchmark suites. We observe that the performance of the software layer is very sensitive to the characteristics of the emulated application with a variance of more than 50%. We also show that the interaction between the software layer and the emulated application, while sharing the microarchitectural resources, can have 0-20% impact on performance. Finally, we identify some key elements which should be further investigated to reduce the observed variations in performance. The paper provides critical insights to improve the software layer design.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1109/IISWC.2016.7581274
2016 IEEE International Symposium on Workload Characterization (IISWC)
Keywords
Field
DocType
quantitative characterization,software layer performance,HW/SW codesigned processor,dynamic binary translation,runtime application behavior,hybrid architectures,translation overheads,optimization overheads,microarchitectural resources,software layer design,hardware-software codesigned processor
Computer architecture,Computer science,Parallel computing,Real-time computing,Software,Binary translation,Offset (computer science),Benchmark (computing),Overhead (business)
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-5090-3897-8
0
0.34
References 
Authors
19
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jose Cano12578.38
Rakesh Kumar2223.62
Aleksandar Branković371.10
Demos Pavlou4312.17
Kyriakos Stavrou51038.61
Enric Gibert6877.85
A. Martínez7536.03
Antonio González83178229.66