EmPower: FPGA based emulation of dynamic power management algorithms for multi-core systems on chip (abstract only)

Dynamic power management for multi-core system on chip (MPSoC) platforms has become an increasingly critical design problem. In this paper, we present EmPower, an FPGA based emulation, validation and prototyping framework for dynamic power management research targeted at MPSoC platforms. EmPower supports two advanced power management features -- per-core dynamic frequency scaling and clock gating, and power-aware thread migration. We also provide two fully-functional parallel applications for benchmarking -- video encoding and software-defined radio. Our experimental results indicate that EmPower provides up to 36 -- improvement in run-time compared to cycle-accurate software simulations, and enables accurate and efficient exploration of the design space of power management algorithms.