Memory access aware on-line voltage control for performance and energy optimization
Xi Chen, Chi Xu, Robert P. Dick · 2010
Abstract—This paper describes an off-chip memory access-aware runtime DVFS control technique that minimizes energy consumption subject to constraints on application execution times. We consider application phases and the implications of changing cache miss rates on the ideal power control state. We first propose a two-stage DVFS algorithm based on formulating the throughput-constrained energy minimization problem as a multiple-choice knapsack problem (MCKP). This algorithm uses a power model that adapts to application phase changes by observing processor hardware performance counter values. The solutions it produces provide upper bounds on the energy savings achievable under a performance constraint. However, this algorithm assumes a priori (oracle or profiling-based) knowledge of application phase change behavior. To relax this assumption, we propose P-DVFS, an predictive DVFS algorithm for on-line minimization of energy consumption under a performance constraint without requiring a priori knowledge of an application’s behavior.