ArchExplorer

Computer architects agree that reproducing experimental results of architectural ideas is currently a daunting task as simulators are not systematically disseminated. ArchExplorer is a new web infrastructure that aims at facilitating a fair quantitative comparison of architectural ideas by providing a repository of research implementations and permanently exploring the design space as to tune the available mechanisms.

In order to benefit from ArchExplorer, researchers need to adapt their custom simulator to make it compatible with the server-side infrastructure. This requires compatibility of the mechanism at the hardware level as well as properly wrapping the hardware simulator. Once the hardware simulator is uploaded together with a specification of valid and potentially interesting parameter ranges, the mechanism becomes immediately part of the explored design space. The architectural design space is statistically explored, and for each architectural design the compiler is automatically retuned for a truly meaningful comparison with other architectural design points, and the benchmarks recompiled accordingly. After the set of benchmarks has been simulated for a design point, performance results are accumulated in a database, and publicly made available through the web site.

At any time, ArchExplorer automatically compares and ranks the available mechanisms according to performance, power, and area criteria.

The web infrastructure is now publicly open at www.archexplorer.org.

Contact:
Veerle Desmet, Ghent University
Sylvain Girbal, Thales
Olivier Temam, INRIA