Exploring the heterogeneous design space for both performance and reliability

As we move into a new era of heterogeneous multi-core systems, our ability to tune the performance and understand the reliability of both hardware and software becomes more challenging. Given the multiplicity of different design trade-offs in hardware and software, and the rate of introduction of new architectures and hardware/-software features, it becomes difficult to properly model emerging heterogeneous platforms. In this paper we present a new methodology to address these challenges in a flexible and extensible framework. We describe the design of a framework that supports a range of heterogeneous devices to be evaluated based on different performance/reliability criteria. We address heterogeneity both in hardware and software, providing a flexible framework that can be easily adapted and extended as new elements in the SoC stack continue to evolve. Our framework enables modeling at different levels of abstraction and interfaces to existing tools to compose hybrid modeling environments. We also consider the role of software, providing a flexible and modifiable compiler stack based on LLVM. We provide examples that highlight both the flexibility of this framework and demonstrate the utility of the tools.