Regression Modeling Strategies for Microarchitectural Performance and Power Prediction

Abstract

We propose regression modeling as an effective approach for accurately predicting performance and power for various applications executing on any microprocessor configuration in a large microarchitectural design space. This report addresses fundamental challenges in microarchitectural simulation costs via statistical modeling. Specifically, we derive and validate regression models for performance and power. Such models enable computationally efficient statistical inference, requiring the simulation of only 1 in 5 million points of a joint microarchitecture-application design space while achieving error rates as low as 4.1 percent for performance and 4.3 percent for power. Although both models achieve similar accuracy, the sources of accuracy are strikingly different. We present optimizations for a baseline regression model to obtain (1) per benchmark application-specific models designed to maximize accuracy in performance prediction and (2) regional power models leveraging only the most relevant samples from the microarchitectural design space to maximize accuracy in power prediction. Assessing model sensitivity to sample and region sizes, we find 4,000 samples from a design space of approximately 22 billion points, are sufficient for both application-specific and regional modeling and prediction. Collectively, our results suggest significant potential in accurate and efficient statistical inference for microarchitectural design space exploration via regression models.