research-article

Core monitors: monitoring performance in multicore processors

Authors:

Sally A. McKeeAuthors Info & Claims

CF '09: Proceedings of the 6th ACM conference on Computing frontiers

Pages 31 - 40

https://doi.org/10.1145/1531743.1531751

Published: 18 May 2009 Publication History

Abstract

As we reach the limits of single-core computing, we are promised more and more cores in our systems. Modern architectures include many performance counters per core, but few or no inter-core counters. In fact, performance counters were not designed to be exploited by users, as they now are, but simply as aids for hardware debugging and testing during system creation. As such, they tend to be an "after thought" in the design, with no standardization across or within platforms. Nonetheless, given access to these counters, researchers are using them to great advantage [17]. Furthermore, evaluating counters for multicore systems has become a complex and resource consuming task. We propose a Performance Monitoring System consisting of a specialized CPU core designed to allow efficient collection and evaluation of performance data for both static and dynamic optimizations. Our system provides a transparent mechanism to change architectural features dynamically, inform the Operating System of process behaviors, and assist in profiling and debugging. For instance, a piece of hardware watching snoop packets can determine when a write-update cache coherence protocol would be helpful or detrimental to the currently running program. Our system is designed to allow the hardware to feed performance statistics back to software, allowing dynamic architectural adjustments at runtime.

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Cited By

Plosila JGuang LNigussie ETenhunen H(2012)Dual Monitoring Communication for Self-Aware Network-on-ChipInternational Journal of Adaptive, Resilient and Autonomic Systems10.4018/jaras.20120701053:3(72-91)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/jaras.2012070105
Kramer DKarl W(2012)A Scalable Monitoring Infrastructure for Self-Organizing Many-Core ArchitecturesProceedings of the 2012 15th Euromicro Conference on Digital System Design10.1109/DSD.2012.12(42-49)Online publication date: 5-Sep-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/DSD.2012.12
Goumas GMcKee SSjälander MGross TKarlsson SProbst CZhang LFursin GHundt RMars JKashnikov Y(2011)Adapt or become extinct!Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Adaptive Self-Tuning Computing Systems for the Exaflop Era10.1145/2000417.2000422(46-51)Online publication date: 5-Jun-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2000417.2000422

Index Terms

Core monitors: monitoring performance in multicore processors
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Architectures
    1. Other architectures
2. Hardware
  1. Hardware validation

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CF '09: Proceedings of the 6th ACM conference on Computing frontiers

May 2009

238 pages

ISBN:9781605584133

DOI:10.1145/1531743

General Chairs:
Gearold Johnson
Colorado State University, USA
,
Cartsen Trinitis
TU München, Germany
,
Program Chairs:
Georgi N. Gaydadjiev
TU Delft, The Nederland
,
Alex Veidenbaum
University of California, USA

Copyright © 2009 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 18 May 2009

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CF '09

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CF '09: Computing Frontiers Conference

May 18 - 20, 2009

Ischia, Italy

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CF '09 Paper Acceptance Rate 26 of 113 submissions, 23%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 273 of 785 submissions, 35%

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Cited By

Plosila JGuang LNigussie ETenhunen H(2012)Dual Monitoring Communication for Self-Aware Network-on-ChipInternational Journal of Adaptive, Resilient and Autonomic Systems10.4018/jaras.20120701053:3(72-91)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.4018/jaras.2012070105
Kramer DKarl W(2012)A Scalable Monitoring Infrastructure for Self-Organizing Many-Core ArchitecturesProceedings of the 2012 15th Euromicro Conference on Digital System Design10.1109/DSD.2012.12(42-49)Online publication date: 5-Sep-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/DSD.2012.12
Goumas GMcKee SSjälander MGross TKarlsson SProbst CZhang LFursin GHundt RMars JKashnikov Y(2011)Adapt or become extinct!Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Adaptive Self-Tuning Computing Systems for the Exaflop Era10.1145/2000417.2000422(46-51)Online publication date: 5-Jun-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2000417.2000422

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