Abstract

Future multicores will be very complex: at the very least, they may contain statically heterogeneous cores, which are designed with different engineering trade-offs, and dynamically heterogeneous cores, which have different, and rapidly changing, execution characteristics. Hardware companies traditionally expose chips to system software at a very low level, effectively saying, “Here is what we built, now do something with it.” However, there are several advantages to having the chip itself manage these emerging complexities, while exposing a more generic interface to software. We do not have all of the answers for the appropriate role of system software, but we do suggest that system architects should carefully consider the benefits of abstraction when designing future systems.

Citations