(When) Will CMPs Hit the Power Wall?

Authors:
Cor Meenderinck;Ben Juurlink
Affiliations:
Computer Engineering Department, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands;Computer Engineering Department, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands
Venue:
Euro-Par 2008 Workshops - Parallel Processing
Year:
2009

Citing 3
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Abstract

The power wall is currently one of the major obstacles computer architecture is facing. In this paper we analyze the impact of the power wall on CMP design. As a case study we model a CMP consisting of Alpha 21264 cores, scaled to future technology nodes according to the ITRS roadmap. When running at the maximum clock frequency, such a CMP would far exceed the power budget. Although power limits performance significantly, technology improvements will still provide performance growth. Amdahl's Law highly threatens this performance growth, but might not be valid for all application domains. In those cases Gustafson's Law could be valid which is much more optimistic. From our results we derive some principles to prevent CMPs from hitting the power wall.