Power-performance modelling of mobile gaming workloads on heterogeneous MPSoCs

Games have emerged as one of the most popular applications on mobile platforms. Recent platforms are now equipped with Heterogeneous Multiprocessor System-on-Chips (HMPSoCs) tightly integrating CPUs and GPUs on the same chip. This configuration enables high-end gaming on the platform but at the cost of high power consumption rapidly draining the underlying limited-capacity battery. The HMPSoCs are capable of independent Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) for CPUs and GPUs for reduction in platform´s power consumption. State-of-the-art power manager for mobile games on HMPSoCs oversimplifies the complex CPU-GPU interplay. In this paper, we develop power-performance models predicting the impact of DVFS on mobile gaming workloads. Based on our models, we propose an efficient power management strategy and implement it on an Odroid-XU+E mobile platform. Measurements on the platform show that our power manager provides on average 20% increase in performance per watt when compared to the state-of-the-art.