Article,

10x10: A General-purpose Architectural Approach to Heterogeneity and Energy Efficiency

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Procedia Comput. Sci., 4 (0): 1987--1996 (2011)

Abstract

Two decades of microprocessor architecture driven by quantitative 90/10 optimization has delivered an extraordinary 1000-fold improvement in microprocessor performance, enabled by transistor scaling which improved density, speed, and energy. Recent generations of technology have produced limited benefits in transistor speed and power, so as a result the industry has turned to multicore parallelism for performance scaling. Long-range studies 1,2 indicate that radical approaches are needed in the coming decade -- extreme parallelism, near-threshold voltage scaling (and resulting poor single-thread performance), and tolerance of extreme variability -- are required to maximize energy efficiency and compute density. These changes create major new challenges in architecture and software. As a result, the performance and energy-efficiency advantages of heterogeneous architectures are increasingly attractive. However, computing has lacked an optimization paradigm in which to systematically analyze, assess, and implement heterogeneous computing. We propose a new paradigm, ``10x10'', which clusters applications into a set of less frequent cases (ie. 10\% cases), and creates customized architecture, implementation, and software solutions for each of these clusters, achieving significantly better energy efficiency and performance. We call this approach ``10x10'' because the approach is exemplified by optimizing ten different 10\% cases, reflecting a shift away from the 90/10 optimization paradigm framed by Amdahl's law 3. We describe the 10x10 approach, explain how it solves the major obstacles to widespread adoption of heterogeneous architectures, and present a preliminary 10x10 clustering, strawman architecture, and software tool chain approach.

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