EAGER: Mobile Multicore Computing

Temple University, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

Multicore technology is entering the mobile phone domain, and it is termed mobile multicore computing (MMC) in this project. With MMC, the current mobile phones are no longer the traditional mobile phones with only voice and/or video phone functionalities. More features, such as multimedia streaming and mobile P2P applications, are integrated into these small devices. The grand challenge in MMC mobile phones is making a good tradeoff between performance and power. Different from existing hardware-oriented approaches, such as clock gating and power gating for high performance and low power design, this research proposes software-oriented approaches such as power-aware parallelization of mobile applications and power-aware task scheduling to meet this challenge. In this 2-year EAGER project, the PI is seeking answers to this foundational performance/power tradeoff problem. The prposal sets forth four ambitious objectives to do so: 1) To build a performance and power tradeoff model for mobile multicore platforms considering user requirements; 2) To parallelize mobile applications for mobile multicore platforms with memory, timing, and power constraints; 3) To schedule multitasks for multicore platforms with memory, timing, and power constraints; and 4) To develop a prototype mobile system based on mobile multicore computing platforms with high performance and low power consumption. It is expected that the insights and results drawn from this project will benefit researchers, practitioners, users, and students on a large scale.