{"title":"Power-efficient value speculation for high-performance microprocessors","authors":"R. Moreno, L. Piñuel, Silvia Del Pino, F. Tirado","doi":"10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874645","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874645","url":null,"abstract":"Improving instruction-level parallelism (ILP) has become one of the greatest challenges in high-performance microprocessor design. Several techniques for counteracting control and data dependencies, based on prediction and speculative execution, have been proposed and their cost-performance tradeoffs have been widely studied. However, in some cases, such as value speculation, power consumption considerations have remained unanalyzed. In this paper, we explore the main sources of power dissipation to be considered when value speculation is used, and we propose solutions to reduce this dissipation-reducing the size of the prediction tables, decreasing the amount of extra work due to speculative execution, and reducing the complexity of the out-of-order issue logic-in order to prove that value speculation can be considered a power-efficient technique for future generations of microprocessors.","PeriodicalId":138250,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 26th Euromicro Conference. EUROMICRO 2000. Informatics: Inventing the Future","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126162734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From VSC attributes and characteristics to SCM challenges","authors":"Tua Rahikkala, V. Seppänen","doi":"10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874493","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874493","url":null,"abstract":"The organisational performance of software companies has become critically important. While customer requirements are changing and varying ever more frequently, and an effective management of the software process is becoming essential, the suitability of current software-related business models has became questionable (M.L. Van De Vanter and T. Murer, 1999; N. Venkatraman and J.C. Henderson, 1998). One of the current global trends is transorganisational collaborative work in distributed, dynamic teamwork environments, called Virtual Software Corporations (VSC). The virtual organisational structure presents particular challenges to software configuration management (SCM), while the rate of change in size, complexity and duration of software projects has shown an increasing acceleration. The paper describes a SCM process analysis conducted in three virtual software production organisations. One of the main results that is presented is a framework for practical SCM process improvement, consisting of SCM challenges defined on the basis of key VSC characteristics and attributes.","PeriodicalId":138250,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 26th Euromicro Conference. EUROMICRO 2000. Informatics: Inventing the Future","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116414019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How to implement the future?","authors":"C. Verhoef","doi":"10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874614","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874614","url":null,"abstract":"This paper sheds light on the realities of implementing spanking new ideas in existing software systems. Information is provided both on the advantages and drawbacks of starting from scratch and basing yourself on an existing software asset to implement your IT future. The paper touches upon the need for tool support to refactor existing software systems so that implementing their IT future is enabled. An idea of how such refactory tools look like is given and pointers to technical research contributions are provided. Those tools aid in overcoming the maintenance debt built up over the years. It is argued that implementing the future in IT amounts to dealing with the past to a large extent.","PeriodicalId":138250,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 26th Euromicro Conference. EUROMICRO 2000. Informatics: Inventing the Future","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129700120","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Quality of service issues in distributed learning environments","authors":"C. Allison, H. Lawson, D. McKechan, A. Ruddle","doi":"10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874396","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874396","url":null,"abstract":"The growing presence of digital multimedia in everyday life, as evidenced by the continuing increase in Internet usage, is expected to augment or replace traditional modes of social and economic interaction. Face-to-face meetings, paperwork, and office-space are all expected to diminish in importance as cyberspace provides new facilities and interaction modes. In the higher education sector distributed learning environments (DLEs) are being cited as solutions to the ambitious political goals of better education, wider access and lower costs. DLEs are still in their infancy however, and if they are to succeed in transforming conventional educational practice they must become quality of service (QoS) aware. The notion of QoS originated in computer networking but if it is not addressed appropriately in all a system components then there may be little or no benefit for that system's users, regardless of the network quality. There is a real danger that policy makers in the educational sphere will simply equate network level QoS with the needs of the end users, namely teachers and students. Our experience with the TAGS framework for constructing DLEs has shown that QoS must be taken into account from many perspectives before traditional educational processes can be satisfactorily transformed. This paper contributes towards an understanding of QoS issues in distributed learning environments by reviewing the network perspective and augmenting it with other, equally important, concerns.","PeriodicalId":138250,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 26th Euromicro Conference. EUROMICRO 2000. Informatics: Inventing the Future","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129896416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An object-oriented modeling of co-operative multimedia systems","authors":"G. Diaz, J. Thomesse, Z. Mammeri","doi":"10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874414","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874414","url":null,"abstract":"Co-operative multimedia systems are characterised by different properties (interactivity, group communication support and QoS sensitiveness). In addition to constraints that can be dealt with in multimedia systems (particularly synchronisation and communication constraints), integrity constraints can be defined and verified, and also temporal constraints can be described in the definition of multimedia flows. We present a model to deal with multimedia constraint representation. We propose a model that allows the description of the constraints and the characterisation of multimedia applications in the context of co-operative environments. Our model defines a framework with different functionality levels to tackle the complexity of distributed multimedia systems. We identify the entities and describe their functions. Also, we define a set of services associated with each level. We describe these services, and we illustrate, by an example, message exchanges between entities.","PeriodicalId":138250,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 26th Euromicro Conference. EUROMICRO 2000. Informatics: Inventing the Future","volume":"28 2S 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130638217","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Peter R. Dietmüller, Markus Jöbstl, J. Mühlbacher, W. Zwicknagl
{"title":"Real-time visualisation of object structures for semantic validation","authors":"Peter R. Dietmüller, Markus Jöbstl, J. Mühlbacher, W. Zwicknagl","doi":"10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874429","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874429","url":null,"abstract":"The paper describes an approach to a solution of the inherent problem of invisible, rapid changing and complex semantic, appearing in object oriented software systems. Our tool represents the exertion of making semantic validation possible, as an essential improvement of software engineering processes. To take this aim, we demand the following claims: (1) it is necessary to analyse the object structure at runtime, without any disturbance of the viewed and visualised application; (2) it must be possible to provide specific customised views to establish the context of use (this is primarily the point where semantics by the viewer is brought in); (3) it is necessary to provide a set of mechanisms to control the visualisation; (4) the manipulation effort of the objects, which have to be visualised, has to be minimised. It must be guaranteed that the online visualisation is done in real time while the inspected process is being executed. Semantic validation may be an appropriate way to improve the software maintenance and support the communication. A specific example is if external coaches and mentors have to introduce users to third party software.","PeriodicalId":138250,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 26th Euromicro Conference. EUROMICRO 2000. Informatics: Inventing the Future","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130684747","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The impact of recent DRAM architectures on embedded systems performance","authors":"M. Gries","doi":"10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874644","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874644","url":null,"abstract":"Embedded computing systems utilize less cache space and fewer memory hierarchy levels than ordinary PC or workstation systems due to cost, area and power dissipation restrictions. Consequently, they particularly depend on the performance of the underlying dynamic RAM (DRAM) main-memory system. Hence, two recent DRAM architectures, the widely-used synchronous DRAMs (SDRAMs) and the next-generation memory called the Direct Rambus DRAM (RDRAM), are investigated in this paper. Performance gains are revealed that can be achieved by exploiting features of recent memory interfaces with simple enhancements of current embedded memory controllers. Different approaches for memory access schemes are investigated by simulation of the DRAM architectures and the memory controller, together with an out-of-order-issue, superscalar-CPU model running various applications. The simulations lead to the following results: using RDRAMs instead of SDRAMs improves the performance of the system by up to one third, while exploiting the multibank structure of DRAMs improves the performance more than pipelining memory transfers does.","PeriodicalId":138250,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 26th Euromicro Conference. EUROMICRO 2000. Informatics: Inventing the Future","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125421884","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Process view on the software contracting in the Internet business","authors":"J. Warsta, V. Seppänen","doi":"10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874424","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874424","url":null,"abstract":"The paper examines the software contracting process and its interaction with other business processes and especially with software processes in an Internet business environment. We start by studying the software company as clusters of different processes. The company processes are divided into management processes, business processes, and work processes. The software contracting process is part of the business processes. We study the influence of the contracting process over the software process and value building from the point of view of the business processes. As we introduce two generic contracting models, we also try to answer to the questions: Why do companies make contracts and what makes the contract process so interesting and worthwhile studying, especially in the new (mobile) Internet environment. Lastly we outline a new tentative contract process model based on our case material from an Internet software company and its contracting process.","PeriodicalId":138250,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 26th Euromicro Conference. EUROMICRO 2000. Informatics: Inventing the Future","volume":"677 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132450220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Complex streamed instructions: introduction and initial evaluation","authors":"S. Vassiliadis, B. Juurlink, E. Hakkennes","doi":"10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874659","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874659","url":null,"abstract":"An architectural paradigm intended to improve the performance of streaming operations is introduced. The proposed complex streamed instructions perform setting, controlling and executing vector operations simultaneously. That is, each of the instructions has the capability of sectioning a vector in addition to performing complex memory accesses and SIMD execution. To provide an initial validation, a video compression application is considered. We identify 5 streamed operations and perform simulations using the SimpleScalar toolset. The experiments show the following: the cycle count diminishes by a factor of 3.1, the number of executed instructions reduces by a factor of 3.0 to 3.2, and the CPI stays about the same. These results show that substantial performance improvements can be expected when complex streamed instructions are employed.","PeriodicalId":138250,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 26th Euromicro Conference. EUROMICRO 2000. Informatics: Inventing the Future","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134640032","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Efficient scheduling of conditional behaviors using hierarchical conditional dependency graphs in the CODESIS system","authors":"A. Kountouris, C. Wolinski","doi":"10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874636","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/EURMIC.2000.874636","url":null,"abstract":"In high-level synthesis (HLS) there is a gap between the quality of the synthesized results between data-flow and control-flow dominated behavioral descriptions. Heuristics destined for the former usually perform poorly on the latter. To close this gap, we advocate for a unifying intermediate design representation and adapted heuristics that have the potential to accommodate both types of designs as well as designs that have a mixed data-flow and control-flow nature. To illustrate our point we focus on the problem of scheduling and describe a list scheduling heuristic which uses a probabilistic priority function that exploits conditional resource sharing and speculative execution possibilities. Experiments show that results are quite insensitive to syntactic variance and that conditional behavior is effectively accounted for. To further validate our approach, the CODESIS interactive synthesis tool based on the proposed internal representation and synthesis techniques has been developed.","PeriodicalId":138250,"journal":{"name":"Proceedings of the 26th Euromicro Conference. EUROMICRO 2000. Informatics: Inventing the Future","volume":"65 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2000-09-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131187874","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}