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Tool Benchmarking Where are we?. Justin E. Harlow III Semiconductor Research Corporation April 9, 2001. Metrics and Benchmarks: A Proposed Taxonomy. Methodology Benchmarking Assessment of productivity Prediction of design time Monitoring of throughput Flow Calibration and Tuning
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Tool BenchmarkingWhere are we? Justin E. Harlow III Semiconductor Research Corporation April 9, 2001
Metrics and Benchmarks:A Proposed Taxonomy • Methodology Benchmarking • Assessment of productivity • Prediction of design time • Monitoring of throughput • Flow Calibration and Tuning • Monitor active tool and flow performance • Correlate performance with adjustable parameters • Estimate settings for future runs • Tool Benchmarking • Measure tool performance against a standard • Compare performance of tools against each other • Measure progress in algorithm development
My Tool Your Tool How It’s Typically Done... The Job
Predictive Value?Kind of…. • It takes more time to detect more faults • But sometimes it doesn’t...
Bigger Benchmarks Take Longer • Sometimes... S526:451 detects, 1740 sec S641:404 detects, 2 sec
What’s Wrong with the way we do it today? • Results are not predictive • Results are often not repeatable • Benchmark sets have unknown properties • Comparisons are inconclusive
A Better Way?Design of Experiments • Critical properties of equivalence class: • “sufficient” uniformity • “sufficient” size to allow for t-test or similar
Example: Tool Comparison • Scalable circuits with known complexity properties • Observed differences are statistically significant
Canonical Reference on DoE Tool Benchmark Methodology • D. Ghosh. Generation of Tightly Controlled Equivalence Classes for Experimental Design of Heuristics for Graph-Based NP-hard Problems. PhD thesis, Electrical and Computer Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, N.C., May 2000. Also available at http://www.cbl.ncsu.edu/publications/#2000-Thesis-PhD-Ghosh.
Tool Benchmark Sets • ISCAS 85, 89, MCNC workshops etc. • ISPD98 Circuit Partitioning Benchmarks • ITC Benchmarks • Texas Formal Verification Benchmarks • NCSU Collaborative Benchmarking Lab
“Large Design Examples” • CMU DSP Vertical Benchmark project. • The Manchester STEED Project • The Hamburg VHDL Archive • Wolfgang Mueller's VHDL collection • Sun Microsystems Community Source program • OpenCores.org • Free Model Foundry • ….
Summary • There are a lot of different activities that we loosely call “benchmarking” • At the tool level, we don’t do a very good job • Better methods are emerging, but • Good Experimental Design is a LOT of work • You have to deeply understand the properties that are important and design the experimental data • Most of the design examples out there are not of much use for tool benchmarking
To Find Out More... Advanced Benchmark Web Site http://www.eda.org/benchmrk Nope… There’s no “a” in there Talk to Steve “8.3” Grout