A Sampling Method Focusing on Practicality

• Published in: IEEE MICRO Vol. 26; no. 6; pp. 14 - 28
• Main Authors: Gracia Perez, D., Berry, H., Temam, O.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Alamitos IEEE 01.11.2006; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE); Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Subjects: Accuracy; Budgeting; Clustering methods; Computational modeling; Computer Science; Computer simulation; Costs; Error analysis; evaluation; Focusing; Hardware Architecture; measurement; modeling; Partitioning; Sampling; Sampling methods; Sampling techniques; Simulation; Software; State of the art; Surges; Timing
• ISSN: 0272-1732; 1937-4143
• DOI: 10.1109/MM.2006.104

This sampling technique, which is hardware-independent and almost entirely transparent to the user, employs a budget-based approach that jointly considers warm-up and sampling costs, presents them as a single parameter to the user, and distributes simulated instructions between warm-up and sampling based on region partitioning and clustering information. Although it focuses on practicality, the technique delivers nearly state-of-the-art speed and accuracy. In this article, we explain how even the most successful of the existing sampling techniques fall short on practicality, especially when it comes to warm-up. We propose a more practical alternative: a sampling technique that focuses specifically on transparency, while also delivering nearly state-of-the-art speed and accuracy. The technique offers a hardware-independent, integrated approach to warm-up and sampling that requires no modification of the functional simulator and relies solely on the performance simulator for warm-up