GeST: An Automatic Framework For Generating CPU Stress-Tests

Abstract

This work presents GeST (Generator for Stress-Tests): a framework for automatically generating CPU stress-tests. The framework is based on genetic algorithm search and can be used to maximize different target CPU metrics such as power, temperature, instructions executed per cycle and dl/dt voltage noise. We demonstrate the generality and effectiveness of the framework by generating various workloads that stress the CPU power, thermal and voltage margins more than both conventional benchmarks and manually written stress-tests. The key framework strengths are its extensibility and flexibility. The user can specify custom measurement and fitness functions as well as the CPU instructions that will be used in the genetic algorithm search. The paper demonstrates the framework prowess by using it with simple and complex fitness functions to generate stress-tests: a) for various platform types ranging from low-power mobile ARM CPUs to high-power x86 CPUs and b) with different measurement instruments such as oscilloscopes and software accessible performance counters and sensors.