Comparison of single-ISA heterogeneous versus wide dynamic range processors for mobile applications

Hamid Reza Ghasemi, Ulya R. Karpuzcu, Nam Sung Kim

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Mobile computing devices demand processors to offer a wide range of performance/power trade-offs so that they can provide much needed high performance or low power consumption depending on a given operating requirement. While dynamic voltage/frequency scaling (DVFS) has been the most powerful technique to provide such trade-offs, few processor vendors have the capability to provide a sufficient DVFS range requiring joint optimization of devices and circuits. Facing such a challenge, two promising approaches are proposed: scaling the amount of processor resources such as on-chip memory and execution units, i.e., dynamic resource scaling (DRS) and switching between big out-of-order (OoO) and little in-order cores in a single-ISA heterogeneous processor such as ARM's big. LITTLE. In this paper, we compare a single-ISA heterogeneous processor with a wide dynamic range (WDR) processor augmented with DRS in terms of (1) device-, circuit-, architecture-level implications, (2) design challenges, (3) area, (4) performance, and (5) energy efficiency. We evaluate a big. LITTLE processor (as a representative of single-ISA heterogeneous processor) based on Cortex-A15/A7 and a WDR processor based on Cortex-A15 running various mobile and SPEC2006 benchmarks. Our experiments demonstrate that the WDR processor combined with DRS can deliver energy efficiency close to the single-ISA heterogeneous processor, depending on the power overhead of circuit implementation to provide the wide DVFS range.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 33rd IEEE International Conference on Computer Design, ICCD 2015
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages304-310
Number of pages7
ISBN (Electronic)9781467371650
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 14 2015
Event33rd IEEE International Conference on Computer Design, ICCD 2015 - New York City, United States
Duration: Oct 18 2015Oct 21 2015

Publication series

NameProceedings of the 33rd IEEE International Conference on Computer Design, ICCD 2015

Other

Other33rd IEEE International Conference on Computer Design, ICCD 2015
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityNew York City
Period10/18/1510/21/15

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 IEEE.

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Comparison of single-ISA heterogeneous versus wide dynamic range processors for mobile applications'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this