A systematic method for functional unit power estimation in microprocessors

We present a new method for mathematically estimating the active unit power of functional units in modern microprocessors such as the Pentium 4 family. Our method leverages the phasic behavior in power consumption of programs, and captures as many power phases as possible to form a linear system of equations such that the functional unit power can be solved. Our experiment results on a real Pentium 4 processor show that power estimations attained as such agree with the measured power very well, with deviations less than 5% only. Categories and Subject Descriptors: C.4[Performance of Systems] General Terms: Measurement, Experimentation

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: DAC
• Authors: Wei Wu, Lingling Jin, Jun Yang 0002, Pu Liu, Sheldon X.-D. Tan
• Keywords: Active Unit Power, Computer Architecture, DAC 2006, Functional Unit Power, Unit Power