Runtime Power Monitoring in High-End Processors: Methodology and Empirical Data

  • Authors:
  • Canturk Isci;Margaret Martonosi

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University;Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 36th annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

With power dissipation becoming an increasingly vexingproblem across many classes of computer systems, measuringpower dissipation of real, running systems has becomecrucial for hardware and software system research and design.Live power measurements are imperative for studiesrequiring execution times too long for simulation, such asthermal analysis. Furthermore, as processors become morecomplex and include a host of aggressive dynamic powermanagement techniques, per-component estimates of powerdissipation have become both more challenging as well asmore important.In this paper we describe our technique for a coordinatedmeasurement approach that combines real totalpower measurement with performance-counter-based, per-unitpower estimation. The resulting tool offers live totalpower measurements for Intel Pentium 4 processors, andalso provides power breakdowns for 22 of the major CPUsubunits over minutes of SPEC2000 and desktop workloadexecution. As an example application, we use the generatedcomponent power breakdowns to identify program powerphase behavior. Overall, this paper demonstrates a processorpower measurement and estimation methodology andalso gives experiences and empirical application resultsthat can provide a basis for future power-aware research.