P-ray: A software suite for multi-core architecture characterization

Alexandre X. Duchateau, Albert Sidelnik, María Jesús Garzarán, David Padua

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

The increasing complexity of computer architectures has made the approach of automatically generating code that is optimized for the target machine a growing area of interest. Examples of such systems are library generators, such as ATLAS, SPIRAL, and FFTW. To generate optimized code without manual intervention, these systems need to know the values of certain hardware parameters, such as the cache size or the number of registers. Current software such as X-Ray or LMbench can automatically determine some of these parameters for single processor super-scalar machines but cannot determine multi-core specific characteristics. In this paper, we present P-Ray, a software suite that characterizes hardware characteristics of multi-core architectures. Such characteristics include the number of cores that share the L2 cache, the different processors' interconnection topologies, and the bandwidth-to-memory. Our experiments show that, for several different architectures tested (desktop and server), P-Ray generates accurate results.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationLanguages and Compilers for Parallel Computing - 21st International Workshop, LCPC 2008, Revised Selected Papers
Pages187-201
Number of pages15
DOIs
StatePublished - 2008
Event21st International Workshop on Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing, LCPC 2008 - Edmonton, AB, Canada
Duration: Jul 31 2008Aug 2 2008

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume5335 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Other

Other21st International Workshop on Languages and Compilers for Parallel Computing, LCPC 2008
Country/TerritoryCanada
CityEdmonton, AB
Period7/31/088/2/08

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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