Redução do consumo energético de aplicações paralelas em arquiteturas multi-core

Abstract

The period that lasted from the advent of microprocessors until early this century was marked by the geometric expansion of their operating frequency. If on one hand it provided continuous performance increases, on the other hand it was also responsible for a problematic growth in heating and energy consumption. In attempt to mitigate these problems, multi-core processors have been used extensively in replacement for singlecore processors, offering a viable alternative to increase performance without increasing frequency. As a way of mapping energy consumption, we present the development of two sets of mathematical models for the representation of the electrical power dissipated in the processors. According to considerations we made in relation to static and dynamic parts of the power, we established an equation for the total power as a function of the operating frequency of the respective analyzed processors. We demonstrate, based on these mathematical models, that the relative energy consumption of processors can be related to parallel processing performance measures, such as speedup and efficiency. We also use the models to monitor the influence of several factors on the reduction of energy consumption in multi-core processors, such as the percentage of the parallel portion of the code, the number of cores to be used each time, the working frequency and speedup itself. Results of the analyzes confirm the theoretical predictions and alert to the possibility of improving the energy performance of multi-core processors, especially in conditions in which the factors of influence can be made flexible.