Performance and power aware CMP thread allocation modeling

Abstract

We address the problem of performance and power-efficient thread allocation in a CMP. To that end, based on analytical model, we introduce a parameterized performance/power metric that can be adjusted according to a preferred tradeoff between performance and power. We introduce an iterative threshold algorithm (ITA) for allocating threads to cores in the case of a single application with symmetric threads. We extend this to a simple and efficient heuristic for the case of multiple applications. We compare the performance/power metric value of ITA with constrained nonlinear optimization, pattern search algorithm and genetic algorithm. ITA outperforms the best of these methods by 9 while consuming on average 0.01% and at most 2.5% of the computational effort. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.