Energy Efficiency of a Multi-Core Processor by Tag Reduction
Energy Efficiency of a Multi-Core Processor by Tag Reduction
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DOI：
10.1007/s11390-011-1149-0
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发表时间：
2011-05
影响因子：
0.7
通讯作者：
Long Zheng;M. Dong;K. Ota;Hai Jin;Song Guo;Jun Ma
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Long Zheng;M. Dong;K. Ota;Hai Jin;Song Guo;Jun Ma
本文的工作主要是研究在多核处理器上使用标签压缩技术, 以降低处理器缓存的功耗. 低功耗处理器的研究一直是微处理器研究的一个重要方向, 标签压缩技术是实现低功耗处理器的有效技术之一. 本文将标签压缩技术从单核处理器扩展应用到多核处理器上, 并将标签压缩技术在多核处理器上的实现转化为寻找页面分配策略, 即将物理内存中的指令页面如何分配到不同的处理器核上运行, 从而显著降低标签冲突甚至完全避免. 为了实现多核处理器上的标签压缩技术, 本文使用不同的启发法, 提出了三种页面分配策略. 在验证多核处理器的标签压缩技术节能的效果的实验中, 我们没有使用传统处理器模拟器采集实验数据. 传统处理器模拟器不能同时支持模拟操作系统的功能和完整, 详细的内存层次结构. 因此采集的数据与真实环境有较大误差. 为了能得到令人信服的实验结果, 我们使用真实操作系统收集实验数据. 实验结果显示, 本文提出的多核处理器标签压缩方法在八核处理器上可以节省 89.93% 的缓存标签能耗, 在四核处理器上可以节省 76.16% 的能耗. 同时与单核处理器上的标签压缩技术相比, 多核处理器上的标签压缩技术亦有很大的优势.Abstract: We consider the energy saving problem for caches on a multi-core processor. In the previous research on low power processors, there are various methods to reduce power dissipation. Tag reduction is one of them. This paper extends the tag reduction technique on a single-core processor to a multi-core processor and investigates the potential of energy saving for multi-core processors. We formulate our approach as an equivalent problem which is to find an assignment of the whole instruction pages in the physical memory to a set of cores such that the tag-reduction conflicts for each core can be mostly avoided or reduced. We then propose three algorithms using different heuristics for this assignment problem. We provide convincing experimental results by collecting experimental data from a real operating system instead of the traditional way using a processor simulator that cannot simulate operating system functions and the full memory hierarchy. Experimental results show that our proposed algorithms can save total energy up to 83.93% on an 8-core processor and 76.16% on a 4-core processor in average compared to the one that the tag-reduction is not used for. They also significantly outperform the tag reduction based algorithm on a single-core processor.