ThreadMarks: A Framework for Input-Aware Prediction of Parallel Application Behavior

Chip-multiprocessors (CMPs) are quickly becoming entrenched as the main-stream architectural platform in computer systems. One of the critical challenges facing CMPs is designing applications to effectively leverage the computational resources they provide. Modifying applications to effectively run on CMPs requires understanding the bottlenecks in applications, which necessitates a detailed understanding of architectural features. Unfortunately, identifying bottlenecks is complex and often requires enumerating a wide range of behaviors. To assist in identifying bottlenecks, this paper presents a framework for developing analytical models based on dynamic program behaviors. That is, given a program and set of training inputs, the framework will generate several analytical models that accurately predict online program behaviors such as memory utilization and synchronization overhead, while taking program input into consideration. These models can prove invaluable for online optimization systems and input-specific analysis of program behavior. We demonstrate that this framework is practical and accurate on a wide range of synthetic and real-world parallel applications over various workloads.