Exploiting parallelism in multicore processors through dynamic optimizations.
2011-11
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Exploiting parallelism in multicore processors through dynamic optimizations.
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2011-11
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Abstract
Efficiently utilizing multi-core processors to improve their performance potentials
demands extracting thread-level parallelism from the applications. Various novel and
sophisticated execution models have been proposed to extract thread-level parallelism
from sequential programs. One such execution model, Thread-Level Speculation (TLS),
allows potentially dependent threads to execute speculatively in parallel.
However, TLS execution is inherently unpredictable, and consequently incorrect
speculation could degrade performance and/or energy efficiency for the multi-core systems.
To address these issues, this dissertation proposes dynamic optimizations that
exploit the benefit of successful speculations, while minimizing the impact of failed
speculations.
First, we propose optimizations to dynamically determine where TLS should be
applied in the original sequential program, whereas prior works have focused on using
the compiler to statically select program regions. Our research shows that even the
state-of-the-art compiler makes suboptimal decisions, due to the unpredictability of TLS
execution. In this dissertation, speculative threads are monitored using the hardwarebased
counters and their performance impact is dynamically evaluated. Performance
tuning policies are devised to adjust the behaviors of speculative threads accordingly.
Dynamic performance tuning naturally allows the system to adapt to many program
behaviors that are runtime dependent.
Second, we propose a heterogeneous multi-core architecture to support energyefficient
TLS. By carefully analyzing the behaviors of standard benchmark workloads,
we identify a set of heterogeneous components that diversify in power and performance
trade-offs and are also feasible to integrate. We have also devised a competent resource
allocation scheme that dynamically monitors the program behavior, analyzes its characteristics,
and matches it with the most energy-efficient configuration of the system. Throttling mechanisms are introduced to mitigate the overhead associated with configuration
changes. Under the context of TLS, our findings have shown that on-chip
heterogeneity and dynamic resource allocation are two key ingredients for achieving
performance improvement in an energy-efficient way.
Description
University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. November 2011. Major: Computer science. Advisor: Prof. Antonia Zhai. 1 computer file (PDF); xii, 128 pages, appendices A-B
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Luo, Yangchun. (2011). Exploiting parallelism in multicore processors through dynamic optimizations.. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/119344.
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