Evaluating Design Tradeoffs in On-Chip Power Management for CMPs

In light of the recent shift towards multi-core processor designs, dynamic power-management techniques that were designed for single-core microprocessors must be augmented with larger chip-level control. In this paper, we explore the design-tradeoffs associated with CMP power management solutions in a full-system simulation environment. We show that global power management solutions outperform solutions that locally manage power per-core. We then show that global power management is most effective at finer granularities that allow it to adapt to changing workload behavior and thus conclude that on-chip hardware solutions for CMP power management are an important consideration for future CMP microprocessors.