Layered, Multi-Threaded, High-Level Performance Design

  • Authors:
  • Andrew S. Cassidy;JoAnn M. Paul;Donald E. Thomas

  • Affiliations:
  • Carnegie Mellon University;Carnegie Mellon University;Carnegie Mellon University

  • Venue:
  • DATE '03 Proceedings of the conference on Design, Automation and Test in Europe - Volume 1
  • Year:
  • 2003

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Abstract

A primary goal of high-level modeling is to efficiently explore a broad design space, converging on an optimal or near-optimal system architecture before moving to a more detailed design. This paper evaluates a high-level, layered software-on-hardware performance modeling environment called MESH that captures coarse-grained, interacting system elements. The validity of the high-level model is established by comparing the outcome of the high-level model with a corresponding low-level, cycle-accurate instruction set simulator. We model a network processor and show that both high and low level models converge on the same architecture when design modifications are classified as good or bad performance impacts.