Analyzing Performance Asymmetric Multicore Processors for Latency Sensitive Datacenter Applications

The semiconductor industry is continuing to harness performance gains through Moore’s Law by developing multicore chips. While thus far these architectures have incorporated symmetric computational components, asymmetric multicore processors (AMPs) have been proposed as a possible alternative to improve power efficiency. To quantify the tradeoffs and benefits of these designs, in this paper we perform an opportunity analysis of performance asymmetric multicore processors in the context of datacenter environments where applications have associated latency SLAs. Specifically, we define two use cases for asymmetric multicore chips, and adopt an analytical approach to quantify gains in power consumption over area equivalent symmetric multicore designs. Based upon our findings, we discuss the practical merits of performance asymmetric chips in datacenters, including the issues that must be addressed in order to realize the theoretical benefits.