Executable Performance Model and Evaluation of High Performance Architectures

Percolation has recently been proposed as a key component of an advanced program exe-cution model for future generation high-end machines featuring adaptive data/code transfor-mation and movement for effective latency tolerance. Percolation is related to conventional prefetch technique, but is more aggressive and smarter. A program unit (e.g. a procedure instance) is not ready to be scheduled for execution until the data it needs is in the right place (close to the code in the memory hierarchy) and in the right form (e.g. proper layout, etc.). Supporting percolation is a major effort in the architecture design and the compiler/runtime software support. An early evaluation of the performance effect of percolation is very im-portant in the design space exploration of future generations of supercomputers. However, performance evaluation of percolation using a traditional approach for computer architecture (e.g. execution-driven or trace-driven simulation) is both time consuming and impractical. Further, in early-stage architecture design/performance evaluation which deals with incom-plete design details, or a program execution model with only a (sketchy) conceptual design