Bailis, PeterReddi, Vijay JanapaGandhi, SanjayBrooks, DavidSeltzer, Margo2012-05-142011Bailis, Peter, Vijay Janapa Reddi, Sanjay Gandhi, David Brooks, and Margot Seltzer. 2011. Dimetrodon: processor-level preventive thermal management via idle cycle injection. In Proceedings of the 48th Design Automation Conference (DAC 2011), San Diego, California, June 5-10, 2011, ed. Leon Stok, Nikil D. Dutt, and Soha Hassoun.978-1-4503-0636-2http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:8739093Processor-level dynamic thermal management techniques have long targeted worst-case thermal margins. We examine the thermal-performance trade-offs in average-case, preventive thermal management by actively degrading application performance to achieve long-term thermal control. We propose Dimetrodon, the use of idle cycle injection, a flexible, per-thread technique, as a preventive thermal management mechanism and demonstrate its efficiency compared to hardware techniques in a commodity operating system on real hardware under throughput and latency-sensitive real-world workloads. Compared to hardware techniques that also lack flexibility, Dimetrodon achieves favorable trade-offs for temperature reductions up to 30% due to rapid heat dissipation during short idle intervals.en-USperformancereliabilitythermal managementaverage-case designidle injectionMonograph or Book2012-05-1410.1145/2024724.2024745