CPT: An Energy-Efficiency Model for Multi-core Computer Systems

Resolving the excessive energy consumption of modern computer systems has become a substantial challenge. Therefore, various techniques have been proposed to reduce power dissipation and improve energy efficiency of computer systems. These techniques affect the energy efficiency across different layers in a system. In order to better understand and analyze those techniques, it is necessary to obtain a general metric that represents the energy efficiency of a computer system, for a specific configuration, given a certain amount of workload. In this paper, we take the initial step and define a general energy-efficiency model, the CPT model, for multi-core computer systems. CPT is a unified model that helps to decide the nearoptimal configuration of a system in terms of energy efficiency to execute a given workload. In addition, we expect the model can be utilized to analyze possible knobs that are used to improve energy efficiency. Three case studies are employed to illustrate the usage of the proposed CPT model.