Characterizing processor thermal behavior

Abstract

Temperature is a dominant factor in the performance, reliability, and leakage power consumption of modern processors. As a result, increasing numbers of researchers evaluate thermal characteristics in their proposals. In this paper, we measure a real processor focusing on its thermal characterization executing diverse workloads. Our results show that in real designs, thermal transients operate at larger scales than their performance and power counterparts. Conventional thermal simulation methodologies based on profile-based simulation or statistical sampling, such as Simpoint, tend to explore very limited execution spans. Short simulation times can lead to reduced matchings between performance and thermal phases. To illustrate these issues we characterize and classify from a thermal standpoint SPEC00 and SPEC06 applications, which are traditionally used in the evaluation of architectural proposals. This paper concludes with a list of recommendations regarding thermal modeling considerations based on our experimental insights.