Thermal analysis and modeling of embedded processors

This paper presents a complete modeling approach to analyze the thermal behavior of microprocessor-based systems. While most compact modeling approaches require a deep knowledge of the implementation details, our method defines a black box technique which can be applied to different target processors when this detailed information is unknown. The obtained results show high accuracy, applicability and can be easily automated. The proposed methodology has been used to study the impact of code transformations in the thermal behavior of the chip. Finally, the analysis of the thermal effect of the source code modifications can be included in a temperature-aware compiler which minimizes the total temperature of the chip, as well as the temperature gradients, according to these guidelines. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.