Performance evaluation of many‐core systems: case study with TILEPro64
Han-Yee Kim, Young‐Hwan Kim, Heonchang Yu, Taeweon Suh · IET Computers & Digital Techniques · 2013
This study evaluates the performance of the 64‐core‐based TILEPro64, and compares it with Core i7 and Atom by executing three benchmark programs: a synthetic bench, SPEC CINT2006 and SPLASH‐2. TILEPro64 is not advertised for regular applications such as SPLASH‐2. However, its internal many‐core structure makes it worth investigating the performance characteristic with conventional benchmarks. The synthetic benchmark shows that the stall time because of on‐chip network takes up to 85% of total execution time in TILEPro64. The single‐core performance with CINT2006 reports that Core i7 and Atom deliver 15.4 × and 3.8 × superior performance to TILEPro64, respectively. The parallel performance with SPLASH‐2 reports a similar trend. Comparing the fastest execution times, Core i7 boasts of a 19.2 × faster performance than TILEPro64 and even Atom outperforms TILEPro64 by 2.6 × on average. It came as a surprise that even Atom outperforms TILEPro64 in most of the benchmark programs. The highest number of last‐level cache misses is a major culprit for low performance. The forerunner many‐core products such as TILEPro64 offer excellent test‐beds for polishing, adjusting and reshaping many‐core architecture in the right direction.