XPDL: Extensible Platform Description Language to Support Energy Modeling and Optimization

We present XPDL, a modular, extensible platform description language for heterogeneous multicore systems and clusters. XPDL specifications provide platform metadata about hardware and installed system software that are relevant for the adaptive static and dynamic optimization of application programs and system settings for improved performance and energy efficiency. XPDL is based on XML and uses hyperlinks to create distributed libraries of platform metadata specifications. We also provide first components of a retarget able tool chain that browses and processes XPDL specifications, and generates driver code for micro benchmarking to bootstrap empirical performance and energy models at deployment time. A C++ based API enables convenient introspection of platform models, even at run-time, which allows for adaptive dynamic program optimizations such as tuned selection of implementation variants.