Scalable performance monitoring of application specific multiprocessor Systems-on-Chip

It is widely known that Multiprocessor Systems-on-Chip (MPSoC) is the driving force behind many embedded devices. State-of-the-art mobile phones and gaming consoles contain more than four processors in their MPSoC. Performance counters have become the recent trend in these devices to perform runtime adaptations to match power and performance budgets. In this paper, we propose a scalable performance monitoring unit (referred to as Event Monitoring Unit - EMU) for application specific MPSoC. Our monitors can be easily attached to an application specific processor as a hardware IP, to monitor any given event. The monitors are programmable, allowing customizable event handling and performance modeling for runtime adaptation and verification. Our programmable EMU costs very little hardware.