Phase-Guided Small Sample Simulation Joshua Kihm, Sam Strom, Daniel A. Connors. Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (ISPASS) April, 2007. Detailed cycle-accurate simulation remains a vital component of the processor design process. However, with the increasing complexity of modern processors and application workloads, full detailed simulation is prohibitively slow, often taking several months of simulation time. Sampled simulation seeks to overcome this problem by only simulating in detail a very small but representative subset of the overall execution. Two popular sampling techniques which have been shown effective and accurate are phase-based simulation and small-sample simulation. Consequently, both of these techniques are derived using the same benchmark suite and promote the same sampling method for every application being studied. In fact, to achieve the most efficient and accurate simulation acceleration, a sampling-based simulation technique must adapt to the unique characteristics of the individual application being simulated. To evaluate the impact of different application characteristics on simulation approaches, we compare several simulation techniques using both the Spec2000 and Spec2006 benchmark suites. Our results yield key conclusions about combining the strengths of previous simulation techniques into a single superior approach: (PGSS) Phase-Guided Small-Sample Simulation. PGSS achieves high sampling accuracy while requiring an order of magnitude less detailed simulation time than previous techniques. [ PDF ]