tQUAD - Memory Bandwidth Usage Analysis

One of the main issues in heterogeneous reconfigurable computing is the well-known processor/memory bottleneck. Due to the memory bandwidth limitations, the performance of execution of an application can dramatically increase via the efficient usage of the memory. In this paper, we present tQUAD, a new tool for the memory bandwidth usage analysis. This tool is capable of delivering detailed temporal memory bandwidth usage information for the functions in an application throughout a comprehensive analysis of the memory access patterns of individual functions. This tool, first in its kind, provides an accurate analysis of the task execution and memory bandwidth usage which in the end leads to a sophisticated partitioning of the tasks into different phases during the execution span of an application. Together with an accurate description of the tool, the paper presents a real case study from the multimedia domain to detail all features of the proposed tool.