Efficient Programming for Multicore Processor Heterogeneity: OpenMP versus OmpSs

ARM single-ISA heterogeneous multicore processors combine high-performance big cores with power-efficient small cores. They aim at achieving a suitable balance between performance and energy. However, a main challenge is to program such architectures so as to efficiently exploit their features. In this paper, we study the impact on performance and energy trade-offs of single-ISA architecture according to OpenMP 3.0 and the OmpSs programming models. We consider different symmetric/asymmetric architecture configurations in terms of core frequency and core count between big and LITTLE clusters. Experiments are conducted on both a real Samsung Exynos 5 Octa system-on-chip and the gem5/McPAT simulation frameworks. Results show that OmpSs implementations are more sensitive to loop scheduling parameters than OpenMP 3.0. In most cases, best OmpSs configurations significantly outperform OpenMP ones. While cluster frequency asymmetry provides uninteresting results, asymmetric cluster configuration with single high-performance core and multiple low-power cores provides better performance/energy trade-offs in many cases.