Thermal Balancing Policy for Multiprocessor Stream Computing Platforms

Die-temperature control to avoid hotspots is increasingly critical in MultiProcessor Systems-on-Chip (MPSoCs) for stream computing. In this paper, thermal balancing policies based on task migration are a promising approach to redistribute power dissipation and even out temperature gradients. Since stream computing applications require strict quality of service and timing constraints, the real-time performance impact of thermal balancing policies must be carefully evaluated. In this paper, the authors present the design of a lightweight thermal balancing policy MiGra, which bounds on-chip temperature gradients via task migration. The proposed policy exploits run-time temperature as well as workload information of streaming applications to define suitable run-time thermal migration patterns, which minimize the number of deadline misses.