Tutorials:SynchroTrace Sigil 2015

Topic Outline

Trace capture & analysis for multi-threaded programs, large design space exploration, and insights from workload profiling (e.g. accelerator design via hw/sw co-design and related architectural decisions).

Synopsis

The SynchroTrace simulation framework enables exploration of a large design space. It has demonstrated speed and accuracy in aiding uncore designers for cache and network-on-chip design decisions, and is currently being integrated into Gem5 as an official patch.

Sigil is our workload profiling toolset that has enabled SynchroTrace. It captures and classifies a workload's computation and communication operations, and intercepts synchronization actions within threads. Sigil has been used for accelerator co-design research by gathering communication edges between functions/threads to provide insight to the true cost of a workload. Additionally, its unique ability to create non-deterministic traces in a multithreaded trace is utilized for truly architecture-agnostic simulations.

Agenda

In this talk we discuss the utility and impact of SynchroTrace and Sigil, and show examples downloading, building, and running the tools, along with analysis of the data produced.