Phase characterization for power: evaluating control-flow-based and event-counter-based techniques

Computer systems increasingly rely on dynamic, phasebased system management techniques, in which system hardware and software parameters may be altered or tuned at runtime for different program phases. Prior research has considered a range of possible phase analysis techniques, but has focused almost exclusively on performance-oriented phases; the notion of power-oriented phases has not been explored. Moreover, the bulk of phase-analysis studies have focused on simulation evaluation. There is need for real-system experiments that provide direct comparison of different practical techniques (such as control flow sampling, event counters, and power measurements) for gauging phase behavior. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a live, real-system measurement framework for collecting and analyzing power phases in running applications. Our experimental framework simultaneously collects control flow, performance counter and live power measurement information. Using this framework, we direc...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: HPCA
• Authors: Canturk Isci, Margaret Martonosi
• Keywords: Basic Block Vectors, Computer Architecture, HPCA 2006, Performance Counter Techniques, Power Phases