Automated Design Space Exploration with Aspen
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory, One Bethel Valley Road, Building 5100, MS-6173 Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6173, USA
Architects and applications scientists often use performance models to explore a multidimensional design space of architectural characteristics, algorithm designs, and application parameters. With traditional performance modeling tools, these explorations forced users to first develop a performance model and then repeatedly evaluate and analyze the model manually. These manual investigations proved laborious and error prone. More importantly, the complexity of this traditional process often forced users to simplify their investigations. To address this challenge of design space exploration, we extend our Aspen (Abstract Scalable Performance Engineering Notation) language with three new language constructs: user-defined resources, parameter ranges, and a collection of costs in the abstract machine model. Then, we use these constructs to enable automated design space exploration via a nonlinear optimization solver. We show how four interesting classes of design space exploration scenarios can be derived from Aspen models and formulated as pure nonlinear programs. The analysis tools are demonstrated using examples based on Aspen models for a three-dimensional Fast Fourier Transform, the CoMD molecular dynamics proxy application, and the DARPA Streaming Sensor Challenge Problem. Our results show that this approach can compose and solve arbitrary performance modeling questions quickly and rigorously when compared to the traditional manual approach.
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- OSTI ID:
- 1198095
- Journal Information:
- Scientific Programming, Journal Name: Scientific Programming Vol. 2015; ISSN 1058-9244
- Publisher:
- Hindawi Publishing CorporationCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- Egypt
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
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