ECMon: exposing cache events for monitoring

The advent of multicores has introduced new challenges for programmers to provide increased performance and software reliability. There has been significant interest in techniques that use software speculation to better utilize the computational power of multicores. At the same time, several recent proposals for ensuring software reliability are not applicable in a multicore setting due to their inability to handle interprocessor shared memory dependences (ISMDs). The demands for performing speculation and ensuring software reliability in a multicore setting, although seemingly different, share a common requirement: the need for monitoring program execution and collecting interprocessor dependence information at low overhead. For example, an important component of speculation is the efficient detection of missspeculation which in turn requires dependence information. Likewise, tasks that help ensure software reliability on multicores, including recording for replay, require ISMD inf...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ISCA
• Authors: Vijay Nagarajan, Rajiv Gupta
• Keywords: Hardware, ISCA 2009, Multicore Setting, Shared Memory Dependences, Software Reliability