Towards Just-In-Time Software Approximations
Lucas Reis, Lucas Wanner, Sandro Rigo · 2024
Software-level approximations, such as loop perforation, function replacement, and memoization, can significantly enhance application performance and energy efficiency during compile time. However, approximating compilers often require extensive user intervention and lack the capability for real-time adaptation. This paper presents RAAS, a framework that integrates just-in-time recompilation with an automated evaluation system to create a general-purpose software approximation system with minimal user involvement. Our framework can apply input-aware approximations without needing a separate testing phase by continuously monitoring the target application and recompiling code blocks. We evaluated the framework with a set of resilient benchmarks while also comparing its performance with a similar framework focused on static compilation of approximations. Our findings demonstrate speedups of up to 6.3x with quality degradation limited to 30%, achieving competitive results to a static compilation with a shorter convergence time.