Performance Counter Super-resolution

Tuesday February 13, 2007
Hamerschlag Hall D-210
4:30 pm

Roland Wunderlich
Carnegie Mellon University

The "smart" features in modern microprocessors that enhance the runtime of typical applications actually increase the effort and expertise needed to hand-tune applications for maximum performance. High-resolution performance profiles from CPU performance counters can help in pinpointing bottlenecks and in disambiguating the root causes from overlapping hardware activities.

Unfortunately, performance counters today have inherent limitations that hinder the collection of high-resolution measurements. We are developing a super-resolution approach where low-resolution performance counter measurements, taken redundantly over multiple iterations of a program, are combined to reconstruct a high-resolution dynamic counter profile over a program's execution. Our high-resolution performance profiles have uses in hand-tuning software, automated software optimization, and performance comparisons and analysis of computer microarchitectures.

Roland's thesis topic is the subject of this talk. He is pursuing his doctorate in the field of computer architecture with his advisor Prof. James Hoe as part of the Spiral project.