Variorum Developer Documentation

Here is some information on how to extend Variorum to support additional platforms and/or microarchitectures.

A platform refers to a hardware vendor, for example, Intel, IBM, or ARM. A microarchitecture refers to a generation of hardware within a platform, for example, Broadwell or Ivy Bridge for Intel Xeon processors; or Power8 and Power9 for IBM Power processors.

Steps to Add Support for a New Platform (pfm)

  1. Create a new folder under src/variorum/pfm

  2. Create a config_pfm.h and config_pfm.c. These two files implement the detect_pfm_arch and set_pfm_func_ptrs functions. The former identifies the new platform, and the latter sets function pointers for get/set power, thermals, etc. on the new platform. These function pointers refer to internal functions that are defined in microarchitecture-specific files (see next section).

  3. Add a struct listing all the microarchitectures implemented on the new platform in src/variorum/config_architecture.c. Refer to the enum for Intel microarchitectures as an example. You may need to check for the platform in a few places in the config_architecture.c file. Examples of Intel and IBM are included, so these can be referred to.

  4. If you need to modify front-facing APIs, add them to variorum.h and variorum.c.

Steps to Add Support for a New Microarchitecture (pfm_arch)

  1. Follow the steps listed above to create a new platform if the platform does not already exist in the Variorum source.

  2. For each microarchitecture, add a pfm_arch.h and pfm_arch.c file, define the internal get/set functions for capturing power, thermal, performance data. These need to be added as function pointers in the platform file (config_pfm.h and config_pfm.c files).

  3. The internal implementation will depend on the interfaces, such as sensors, MSRs, OPAL, IPMI, etc. If applicable, these can be re-used across microarchitectures (i.e., the same implementation is used for many microarchitectures).

Example

As an example, to support additional NVIDIA microarchitectures: 1. Under the Nvidia/ directory, create a .h and .c header and source file for the respective microarchitecture. This will contain features specific to that microarchitecture, which may or may not exist in previous generations.

2. Modify Nvidia/config_nvidia.c to set the function pointers for the respective microarchitecture.

  1. Include the new header file in Nvidia/config_architecture.h.