Phase distance mapping: a phase-based cache tuning methodology for embedded systems

Networked embedded systems typically leverage a collection of low-power embedded systems (nodes) to collaboratively execute applications spanning diverse application domains (e.g., video, image processing, communication, etc.) with diverse application requirements. The individual networked nodes must operate under stringent constraints (e.g., energy, memory, etc.) and should be specialized to meet varying applications’ requirements in order to adhere to these constraints. Phase-based tuning specializes a system’s tunable parameters to the varying runtime requirements of an application’s different phases of execution to meet optimization goals. Since the design space for tunable systems can be very large, one of the major challenges in phase-based tuning is determining the best configuration for each phase without incurring significant tuning overhead (e.g., energy and/or performance) during design space exploration. In this paper, we propose phase distance mapping, which directly determines the best configuration for a phase, thereby eliminating design space exploration. Phase distance mapping applies the correlation between a known phase’s characteristics and best configuration to determine a new phase’s best configuration based on the new phase’s characteristics. Experimental results verify that our phase distance mapping approach, when applied to cache tuning, determines cache configurations within 1 % of the optimal configurations on average and yields an energy delay product savings of 27 % on average.