Profiling with Helper Threads.
Takamasa Tokunaga, Toshinori Sato · Parallel and distributed computing and networks · 2005
Dynamic optimization technology improves its target system on the fly according to the system status. There are some studies on microprocessors to dynamically improve performance and energy efficiency. We are investigating a software-based dynamic optimization mechanism on a multi-threaded processor to improve performance. Optimization is performed on binary codes. To optimize binary codes dynamically, profile information is required. Gathering profiles suffers overhead, and thus low overhead scheme is strongly required. This paper proposes to utilize helper threads to gather profile information with little overhead. Simulation results are also presented.