A first-order mechanistic model for architectural vulnerability factor

Soft error reliability has become a first-order design criterion for modern microprocessors. Architectural Vulnerability Factor (AVF) modeling is often used to capture the probability that a radiation-induced fault in a hardware structure will manifest as an error at the program output. AVF estimation requires detailed microarchitectural simulations which are time-consuming and typically present aggregate metrics. Moreover, it requires a large number of simulations to derive insight into the impact of microarchitectural events on AVF. In this work we present a first-order mechanistic analytical model for computing AVF by estimating the occupancy of correct-path state in important microarchitecture structures through inexpensive profiling. We show that the model estimates the AVF for the reorder buffer, issue queue, load and store queue, and functional units in a 4-wide issue machine with a mean absolute error of less than 0.07. The model is constructed from the first principles of out-of-order processor execution in order to provide novel insight into the interaction of the workload with the microarchitecture to determine AVF. We demonstrate that the model can be used to perform design space explorations to understand trade-offs between soft error rate and performance, to study the impact of scaling of microarchitectural structures on AVF and performance, and to characterize workloads for AVF.</jats:p

NextGen-Malloc: Giving Memory Allocator Its Own Room in the House

Article describes how memory allocation and management have a significant impact on performance and energy of modern applications. The authors observe that performance can vary by as much as 72% in some applications based on which memory allocator is used, and in this paper, the authors make a case for offloading memory allocation (and other similar management functions) from main processing cores to other processing units to boost performance, reduce energy consumption, and customize services to specific applications or application domains