epEBench: True Energy Benchmark

Current benchmark suites for evaluating energy efficiency of modern computer systems fail to accurately enough replicate real-world streaming applications. A reason for this is that streaming applications (like multi-media applications) have a very indeterministic load pattern which depends heavily on the input data to the application. Partly, current benchmarks are not replicating the instructions used for executing the workload based on the input data used in such applications, and partly benchmarks do not replicate the fluctuating workload level as a result of the execution. Failing to replicate real-world situations renders the results from energy benchmarking untrustworthy, especially when executing streaming applications. This paper presents epEBench – an opensource multi-core benchmark specifically designed for evaluating energy efficiency. The benchmark supports workload modeling and workload level manipulation to generate realistic case studies not earlier supported by benchmark tools. We show how the workload model of two real-world applications has been extracted from their real execution and how this information has been used to create workload models for epEbench. We evaluate the accuracy of the currently created workload models and demonstrate the benchmark suite. Current benchmark suites for evaluating energy efficiency of modern computer systems fail to accurately enough replicate real-world streaming applications. A reason for this is that streaming applications (like multi-media applications) have a very indeterministic load pattern which depends heavily on the input data to the application. Partly, current benchmarks are not replicating the instructions used for executing the workload based on the input data used in such applications, and partly benchmarks do not replicate the fluctuating workload level as a result of the execution. Failing to replicate real-world situations renders the results from energy benchmarking untrustworthy, especially when executing streaming applications. This paper presents epEBench – an opensource multi-core benchmark specifically designed for evaluating energy efficiency. The benchmark supports workload modeling and workload level manipulation to generate realistic case studies not earlier supported by benchmark tools. We show how the workload model of two real-world applications has been extracted from their real execution and how this information has been used to create workload models for epEbench. We evaluate the accuracy of the currently created workload models and demonstrate the benchmark suite.