FIRESTARTER 2: Dynamic Code Generation for Processor Stress Tests

Research output: Contribution to conferencesPaperContributedpeer-review

Abstract

Processor stress tests target to maximize processor power consumption by executing highly demanding workloads. They are typically used to test the cooling and electrical infrastructure of compute nodes or larger systems in labs or data centers. While multiple of these tools already exists, they have to be re-evaluated and updated regularly to match the developments in computer architecture. This paper presents the first major update of FIRESTARTER, an Open Source tool specifically designed to create near-peak power consumption. The main new features concern the online generation of workloads and automatic self-tuning for specific hardware configurations. We further apply these new features on an AMD Rome system and demonstrate the optimization process. Our analysis shows how accesses to the different levels of the memory hierarchy contribute to the overall power consumption. Finally, we demonstrate how the auto-tuning algorithm can cope with different processor configurations and how these influence the effectiveness of the created workload.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages582-590
Number of pages9
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-8491-770X/work/141543286
Scopus 85119314240
ORCID /0009-0003-0666-4166/work/151475581

Keywords

Keywords

  • firestarter, processor stress tests, Epyc Rome, FIRESTARTER, Zen 2, Processor power, AMD, Stress test