Research Bits: April 19

Processor power prediction Researchers from Duke University, Arm Research, and Texas A&M University developed an AI method for predicting the power consumption of a processor, returning results more than a trillion times per second while consuming very little power itself. "This is an intensively studied problem that has traditionally relied on extra circuitry to address," said Zhiyao Xie, a PhD candidate at Duke. "But our approach runs directly on the microprocessor in the background, which opens many new opportunities. I think that's why people are excited about it." The approach, called APOLLO, uses an AI algorithm to identify and select just 100 of a processor's millions of signals that correlate most closely with its power consumption. It then builds a power consumption model off of those 100 signals and monitors them to predict the entire chip's performance in real-time.