Picking Statistically Valid and Early Simulation Points

Modern architecture research relies heavily on detailed pipeline simulation. Simulating the full execution of an industry standard benchmark can take weeks to months to complete. To address this issue we have recently proposed using Simulation Points (found by only examining basic block execution frequency profiles) to increase the efficiency and accuracy of simulation. Simulation points are a small set of execution samples that when combined represent the complete execution of the program. In this paper we present a statistically driven algorithm for forming clusters from which simulation points are chosen, and examine algorithms for picking simulation points earlier in a program’s execution - in order to significantly reduce fastforwarding time during simulation. In addition, we show that simulation points can be used independent of the underlying architecture. The points are generated once for a program/input pair by only examining the code executed. We show the points accurat...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: IEEEPACT
• Authors: Erez Perelman, Greg Hamerly, Brad Calder
• Keywords: Block Execution Frequency, Detailed Pipeline Simulation, Hardware, IEEEPACT 2003, Simulation Points