Program phase detection and exploitation

Chen Ding, Sandhya Dwarkadas, Michael C. Huang, Kai Shen, John B. Carter

Abstract: Studies of application behavior reveal the nested repetition of large and small program phases, with significant variation among phases in such characteristics as memory reference patterns, memory and energy usage, I/O activity, and occupancy of micro-architectural resources. In this project, we study theories and techniques for reliably predicting and exploiting phased behavior, so an advanced execution environment may allocate resources in a way that better matches program needs, or to transform programs so that their needs better match the available resources. In this paper, we present the basic components of the study and report the progress in the past half year