Title: Analysing and improving clustering based sampling for microprocessor simulation

Authors: Yue Luo, Ajay Joshi, Aashish Phansalkar, Lizy John, Joydeep Ghosh

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, USA. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, USA. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, USA. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, USA. ' Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, USA

Abstract: We propose a set of statistical metrics for making a comprehensive, fair, and insightful evaluation of features, clustering algorithms, and distance measures in representative sampling techniques for microprocessor simulation. Our evaluation of different clustering algorithms using these metrics shows that CLARANS clustering algorithm produces better quality clusters in the feature space and more homogeneous phases for CPI compared to the popular k-means algorithm. We also propose a new micro-architecture independent data locality based feature, Reuse Distance Distribution (RDD), for finding phases in programs, and show that the RDD feature consistently results in more homogeneous phases than the Basic Block Vector (BBV) feature for many SPEC CPU2000 benchmark programs.

Keywords: microprocessor simulation; phase behaviour; phase classification features; clustering algorithms; sampling; distance measures.

DOI: 10.1504/IJHPCN.2008.022297

International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking, 2008 Vol.5 No.4, pp.200 - 214

Published online: 27 Dec 2008 *

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