Using software architectural patterns for synthetic embedded multicore benchmark development

Benchmarks capture the essence of many important real-world applications and allow performance, and power analysis while developing new systems. Synthetic benchmarks are a miniaturized form of benchmarks that allow high simulation speeds and act as proxies to proprietary applications. Software architecture principles guide the development of new applications and benchmarks. We leverage software architectural patterns in developing synthetic benchmarks for embedded multicore systems. We developed an automated framework complete with characterization and synthesis components and performed experiments on PARSEC and Rodinia benchmarks. Our benchmarks can be run on any given infrastructure, that is, SMP or message passing, unlike previously developed benchmarks. Hence, this allows us to target heterogeneous embedded multicore systems. Our results show that the synthetic benchmarks and the real applications are similar with respect to various micro-architecture dependent as well as independent metrics.