Criticality-driven superscalar design space exploration

Abstract

It has become increasingly difficult to perform design space exploration (DSE) of computer systems with a short turnaround time because of exploding design spaces, increasing design complexity and long-running workloads. Researchers have used classical search/optimization techniques like simulated annealing, genetic algorithms, etc., to accelerate the DSE. While these techniques are better than an exhaustive search, a substantial amount of time must still be dedicated to DSE. This is a serious bottleneck in reducing research/development time. These techniques do not perform the DSE quickly enough, primarily because they do not leverage any insight as to how the different design parameters of a computer system interact to increase or degrade performance at a design point and treat the computer system as a “black-box”.