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Accurate and fast system-level power modeling: An XScale-based case study

Published: 01 September 2007 Publication History

Abstract

Accurate and fast system modeling is central to the rapid design space exploration needed for embedded-system design. With fast, complex SoCs playing a central role in such systems, system designers have come to require MIPS-range simulation speeds and near-cycle accuracy. The sophisticated simulation frameworks that have been developed for high-speed system performance modeling do not address power consumption, although it is a key design constraint. In this paper, we define a simulation-based methodology for extending system performance-modeling frameworks to also include power modeling. We demonstrate the use of this methodology with a case study of a real, complex embedded system, comprising the Intel XScale®g embedded microprocessor, its WMMX™ SIMD coprocessor, L1 caches, SDRAM and the on-board address and data buses. We describe detailed power models for each of these components and validate them against physical measurements from hardware, demonstrating that such frameworks enable designers to model both power and performance at high speeds without sacrificing accuracy. Our results indicate that the power estimates obtained are accurate within 5% of physical measurements from hardware, while simulation speeds consistently exceed a million instructions per second (MIPS).

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  • (2013)Profiling and online system-level performance and power estimation for dynamically adaptable embedded systemsACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems10.1145/2442116.244213512:3(1-20)Online publication date: 8-Apr-2013
  • (2012)Adaptive online heuristic performance estimation and power optimization for reconfigurable embedded systemsProceedings of the eighth IEEE/ACM/IFIP international conference on Hardware/software codesign and system synthesis10.1145/2380445.2380489(265-274)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2012
  • (2012)A High-Level Power Model for MPSoC on FPGAIEEE Computer Architecture Letters10.1109/L-CA.2011.2411:1(13-16)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2012
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      cover image ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems
      ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems  Volume 6, Issue 4
      Special Section LCTES'05
      September 2007
      352 pages
      ISSN:1539-9087
      EISSN:1558-3465
      DOI:10.1145/1274858
      Issue’s Table of Contents

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      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

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      Publication History

      Published: 01 September 2007
      Published in TECS Volume 6, Issue 4

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      Author Tags

      1. Power modeling
      2. SystemC
      3. embedded systems

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      View all
      • (2013)Profiling and online system-level performance and power estimation for dynamically adaptable embedded systemsACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems10.1145/2442116.244213512:3(1-20)Online publication date: 8-Apr-2013
      • (2012)Adaptive online heuristic performance estimation and power optimization for reconfigurable embedded systemsProceedings of the eighth IEEE/ACM/IFIP international conference on Hardware/software codesign and system synthesis10.1145/2380445.2380489(265-274)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2012
      • (2012)A High-Level Power Model for MPSoC on FPGAIEEE Computer Architecture Letters10.1109/L-CA.2011.2411:1(13-16)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2012
      • (2011)Profile assisted online system-level performance and power estimation for dynamic reconfigurable embedded systemsProceedings of the 16th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference10.5555/1950815.1950956(737-742)Online publication date: 25-Jan-2011
      • (2011)A High-Level Power Model for MPSoC on FPGAProceedings of the 2011 IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing Workshops and PhD Forum10.1109/IPDPS.2011.133(128-135)Online publication date: 16-May-2011

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