The Journal of Instruction-Level Parallelism
4th JILP Workshop on Computer Architecture Competitions (JWAC-4):

Championship Branch Prediction (CBP-4)

in conjunction with:
ISCA-41  http://cag.engr.uconn.edu/isca2014/

The workshop on computer architecture competitions is a forum for holding competitions to evaluate computer architecture research topics. The fourth JWAC workshop is organized around a competition for branch prediction algorithms. The Championship Branch Prediction (CBP) invites contestants to submit their branch prediction code to participate in this competition. Contestants will be given a fixed storage budget to implement their best predictors on a common evaluation framework provided by the organizing committee.

Objective

The goal for this competition is to compare different branch prediction algorithms in a common framework. Predictors will be evaluated for conditional branches. Predictors must be implemented within a fixed storage budget as specified in the competition rules. The simple and transparent evaluation process enables dissemination of results and techniques to the larger computer architecture community and allows independent verification of results.

 

Prizes

The championship will have three tracks, each designing conditional branch predictior with different storage budgets: 4KB, 32KB, and unlimited size. In each category an additional budget of 1024 bits is allowed (for tracking global history for example).  The top performer for each track will receive a trophy commemorating his/her triumph (OR some other prize to be determined later). Top submissions will be invited to present at the workshop, when results will be announced. All source code, write-ups and performance results will be made publicly available through the JWAC-4 website.

 

Submission Requirements

Each submission should include an abstract, writeup, and predictor code.  We should be able to simulate your predictor with a reasonable amount of memory (not exceeding 2GB), and within six hours of simulation time. Also, your predictors must not violate causality (cannot use future information to predict the current branch). Furthermore, you are not allowed to spawn another thread from your predictor code.    


For submission Instructions, click here



    

 

Competition Rules

 

The competition will proceed as follows. Contestants are responsible for implementing and evaluating their algorithm in the distributed framework. Submissions will be compiled and run with the original version of the framework. Quantitatively assessing the cost/complexity of predictors is difficult. To simplify the review process, maximize transparency, and minimize the role of subjectivity in selecting a champion, CBP-4 will make no attempt to assess the cost/complexity of predictor algorithms.  All predictors must be implemented within the constraints of the budget for the track of choice. Clear documentation, in the code as well as the paper writeup, must be provided to assure that this is the case. Predictors will be scored on Mispredictions  per thousand instructions (MPKI) only. The arithmetic mean of MPKIs of all 40 traces will be used as the final score of a predictor.

 

 

Acceptance Criteria

 

In the interest of assembling a quality program for workshop attendees and future readers, there will be an overall selection process, of which performance ranking is the primary component. To be considered, submissions must conform to the submission requirements described above. Submissions will be selected to appear in the workshop on the basis of the performance ranking, novelty, practicality of the predictor, and overall quality of the paper and commented code. Novelty is not a strict requirement, for example, a contestant may submit his/her previously published design or make incremental enhancements to a previously proposed design. In such cases, MPKI is a heavily weighted criterion, as is overall quality of the paper (for example, analysis of new results on the common framework, etc.).

 


CBP-4 Kit: Download and Directions      



Workshop Program  

 


Important Dates

 

Competition formally announced:

February 17, 2014 (HPCA)

Evaluation framework available:

March 3, 2014

Submissions due:

April 14, 2014 at 11:59 PM PST

Acceptance notification:

April 28, 2014

Camera Ready version due:

May 30, 2014

Results announced:

At workshop (June 15, 2014)


Steering Committee

Alaa R. Alameldeen, Intel

Eric Rotenberg, NC State

 

 

 

 

Organizing Committee

Moinuddin Qureshi, Gatech (Chair)

Alaa R. Alameldeen, Intel

Aamer Jaleel, Intel

Chris Wilkerson, Intel

 

 

 

 

Program Chair

Moinuddin Qureshi (Georgia Tech)

 

 

Program Committee


Trey Cain (Qualcomm)

Hyesoon Kim (Georgia Tech)

Gabriel Loh (AMD)

Pierre Michaud (INRIA)

Jared Stark (Intel)