research-article

Reflex: using low-power processors in smartphones without knowing them

Authors:

Felix Xiaozhu Lin,

Robert LiKamWa,

Lin ZhongAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 47, Issue 4

Pages 13 - 24

https://doi.org/10.1145/2248487.2150979

Published: 03 March 2012 Publication History

Abstract

To accomplish frequent, simple tasks with high efficiency, it is necessary to leverage low-power, microcontroller-like processors that are increasingly available on mobile systems. However, existing solutions require developers to directly program the low-power processors and carefully manage inter-processor communication. We present Reflex, a suite of compiler and runtime techniques that significantly lower the barrier for developers to leverage such low-power processors. The heart of Reflex is a software Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) that enables shared memory objects with release consistency among code running on loosely coupled processors. In order to achieve high energy efficiency without sacrificing performance much, the Reflex DSM leverages (i) extreme architectural asymmetry between low-power processors and powerful central processors, (ii) aggressive compile-time optimization, and (iii) a minimalist runtime that supports efficient message passing and event-driven execution. We report a complete realization of Reflex that runs on a TI OMAP4430-based development platform as well as on a custom tri-processor mobile platform. Using smartphone sensing applications reported in recent literature, we show that Reflex supports a programming style very close to contemporary smartphone programming. Compared to message passing, the Reflex DSM greatly reduces efforts in programming heterogeneous smartphones, eliminating up to 38% of the source lines of application code. Compared to running the same applications on existing smartphones, Reflex reduces the average system power consumption by up to 81%.

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Cited By

Li XChen JLiu YWu KGallagher J(2023)Combatting Energy Issues for Mobile ApplicationsACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/352785132:1(1-44)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3527851
Li XShi ZChen JLiu YHardavellas NCampanoni SGrot BKarpuzcu U(2022)Realizing Emotional Interactions to Learn User Experience and Guide Energy Optimization for Mobile ArchitecturesProceedings of the 55th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture10.1109/MICRO56248.2022.00064(868-884)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/MICRO56248.2022.00064
Li XHong SChen JYan GWu K(2022)Using Psychophysics to Guide Power Adaptation for Input Methods on Mobile Architectures2022 IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA)10.1109/HPCA53966.2022.00045(514-527)Online publication date: Apr-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/HPCA53966.2022.00045
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Reflex: using low-power processors in smartphones without knowing them
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Designing software
  2. Software organization and properties
    1. Contextual software domains
      1. Operating systems
        Memory management
        Distributed memory

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 47, Issue 4

ASPLOS '12

April 2012

453 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/2248487

Issue’s Table of Contents

ASPLOS XVII: Proceedings of the seventeenth international conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems
March 2012
476 pages
ISBN:9781450307598
DOI:10.1145/2150976
General Chair:
Tim Harris
Microsoft Research
,
Program Chair:
Michael L. Scott
University of Rochester

Copyright © 2012 ACM.

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 03 March 2012

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 47, Issue 4

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Cited By

Li XChen JLiu YWu KGallagher J(2023)Combatting Energy Issues for Mobile ApplicationsACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/352785132:1(1-44)Online publication date: 13-Feb-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3527851
Li XShi ZChen JLiu YHardavellas NCampanoni SGrot BKarpuzcu U(2022)Realizing Emotional Interactions to Learn User Experience and Guide Energy Optimization for Mobile ArchitecturesProceedings of the 55th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture10.1109/MICRO56248.2022.00064(868-884)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/MICRO56248.2022.00064
Li XHong SChen JYan GWu K(2022)Using Psychophysics to Guide Power Adaptation for Input Methods on Mobile Architectures2022 IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA)10.1109/HPCA53966.2022.00045(514-527)Online publication date: Apr-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/HPCA53966.2022.00045
Hu JShearer ARajagopalan SLiKamWa RSong JKim MLane NBalan R(2019)BannerProceedings of the 17th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services10.1145/3307334.3326092(236-248)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3307334.3326092
Guo LXu TXu MLiu XLin FOliveira RFelber PHu Y(2018)Power sandboxProceedings of the Thirteenth EuroSys Conference10.1145/3190508.3190533(1-15)Online publication date: 23-Apr-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3190508.3190533
Li XYang YLiu YGallagher JWu KKhurshid SPăsăreanu C(2020)Detecting and diagnosing energy issues for mobile applicationsProceedings of the 29th ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis10.1145/3395363.3397350(115-127)Online publication date: 18-Jul-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3395363.3397350
Chuang HLyerly RLankes SRavindran B(2020)Scaling Shared Memory Multiprocessing Applications in Non-cache-coherent DomainsProceedings of the 13th ACM International Systems and Storage Conference10.1145/3383669.3398278(13-24)Online publication date: 30-May-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3383669.3398278
Guo LZhai SQiao YLin FDan TDahlia M(2019)TranskernelProceedings of the 2019 USENIX Conference on Usenix Annual Technical Conference10.5555/3358807.3358865(675-691)Online publication date: 10-Jul-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3358807.3358865
Brocanelli MWang X(2019)SODACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems10.1145/327552113:3(1-24)Online publication date: 15-Mar-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3275521
Guo LXu TXu MLiu XLin FOliveira RFelber PHu Y(2018)Power sandboxProceedings of the Thirteenth EuroSys Conference10.1145/3190508.3190533(1-15)Online publication date: 23-Apr-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3190508.3190533
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