04/18/23

How to measure Multi-Instruction, Multi-Core

Processor Performance using Simulation

Deepak Shankar

Darryl Koivisto

Mirabilis Design Inc.

04/18/23 Mirabilis Design Inc Confidential Slide 2

Mirabilis Design™

Concept Engineering software and services Founded in 2003 & based in Sunnyvale, USA 19 customers and 18 projects completed Product

• Two major product-lines: Architect™ and Explorer

• Third Generation Applications

• High-performance systems, custom semiconductors and real-time software

Comprehensive System Design Software ProviderComprehensive System Design Software Provider

04/18/23 Mirabilis Design Inc Confidential Slide 3

Trends Semiconductor companies are migrating to 2, 4, 8

multi-instruction, multi-core processors to improve performance, reduce power• Processors are migrating from SIMD to MIMD architectures

Compute system vendors are packaging multi-processor systems to improve performance, reduce cost

Scaling from single processor, single core to multi-processor, multi-core requires more inter-processor communication: Amdahl’s Law of Parallel Computing

Many benchmarks are limited to single processor, single core, there is a need for a new methodolgy

04/18/23 Mirabilis Design Inc Confidential Slide 4

Benchmark Challenges Different configurations lead to remarkably

different performance and power metrics• Multi-Processors vs. Multi-Cores• Shared vs. Distributed Caches• Communication Bandwidth between Processors/Cores

Multi-Threaded applications make benchmarking more difficult• How are Applications partitioned: thread per node or

application per node• How are Applications distributed, controlled• Speed of Processors, Memory, Communication is not

scaleable in all cases

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Multi-Core/Processor Benchmarking Solution Speedup equations that take into account parallel execution

• Speedup_Factor, Multi_Instr_Mhz, Multi_Core_Mhz Modeling Platform that supports multi-instruction, multi-core

topologies using routing tables• Create models for different processor memory, and connectivity

configurations• Scaleable infrastructure for end-users to experiment with their specific

variations Processor Models that support published benchmarks

• Key parameters, multi-instruction per cycle, shared cache• Multiple instances, scriptable pipeline

Ability to correlate baseline results to hardware tests• Interactive and graphical demonstration of the benchmark results• Hundreds of built-in statistics

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Speedup EquationsMulti-Instruction  

                   Single_Instruction_App_TimeSpeedup_Factor = ----------------------------                   Multi_Instruction_App_Time  

Multi_Instr_Mhz =  Single_Instruction_Mhz * Speedup_Factor 

Multi-Core                   Single_Core_App_Time                    Speedup_Factor = ---------------------                   Multi_Core_App_Time  Multi_Core_Mhz  =  Single_Core_Mhz * Speedup_Factor Note: Multi_Core_App_Time assumes time to complete Single_Core_App_Time distributed among N cores plus communication time.

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Performance, Power and Functional Exploration

Idea

Discussion

Need to design Traffic Mgr-Variable sizes and priority-Over 1000 concurrent portprocessing

Customer RequirementsAnalysisBottlenecksThroughputCapacity

Golden ReferenceArchitecture Defn.Component SizeFunction mapping

Concept Engineering and Design OptimizationConcept Engineering and Design Optimization

04/18/23 Mirabilis Design Inc Confidential Slide 8

VisualSim Provides

Graphical and Hierarchical Modeling based on Ptolemy Simulation Engine• Modeling blocks to quickly construct a custom/ platform model

• Mixed abstractions and mixed-signal modeling

• Over 2000 power, buffering and performance statistics generators built into architecture blocks

Interface and Documentation• Built-in documentation capability

• Embedding models in documents for remote execution

• Wizard for native code (C/C++/Java/RTL/SystemC)

Modeling libraries, mixed abstraction and hierarchical developmentModeling libraries, mixed abstraction and hierarchical development

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Multi-Processor Benchmark Model

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Detailed Benchmark Results

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Benchmark Drives Business

Use Benchmark for marketing, Product Specification and Early System Prototyping

KnowledgeBase

Auto-GenerateSpecification

CommunicateRequirements

VisualSim is the Media for Universal CommunicationVisualSim is the Media for Universal Communication

ArchitectArchitect FieldSupportField

Support

CustomerInput

CustomerInput

Map RequestsGraphically

MarketingMarketing Involved Early in the Design

Test &Diagnostics

Test &Diagnostics

ApplicationDriven selection

CustomerDecision

CustomerDecision

04/18/23

Functional, Performance vs. PowerConcept Engineering

ModelingSimulation

Hardware

SoC/IC/FPGA

EmbeddedSoftware

Network