Using FORAY Models to Enable MPSoC Memory Optimizations

With the technology advances it becomes feasible to implement a large multiprocessor system on a single chip. In such Systems-on-Chip (SoCs), a significant portion of energy is spent in the memory subsystem. There are several approaches reducing this energy, including the ones at physical, architecture and algorithmic levels. Classical approaches, including algorithmic and some architectural approaches, use static analysis and transformation of the application source code. However, often it is not possible to perform static analysis and optimization of a program’s memory access behavior unless the program is written in an easily analyzable form, e.g., free from pointer arithmetic. In this paper, we introduce the FORAY model of a program that allows aggressive analysis of the application’s memory behavior and enables such optimizations on arbitrary code which are not possible to apply otherwise. We then present FORAY-GEN: an automated profile-based approach for extraction of the FORAY model from the original program. We also outline our approach in applying FORAY-GEN for multiprocessor SoCs. We demonstrate how FORAY-GEN enhances applicability of other memory subsystem optimization approaches, resulting in an average of two times increase in the number of memory references that can be analyzed by existing static approaches.