GraphPerf-RT: A Graph-Driven Performance Model for Hardware-Aware Scheduling of OpenMP Codes
Authors
Mohammad Pivezhandi, Mahdi Banisharif, Saeed Bakhshan, Abusayeed Saifullah, Ali Jannesari
Abstract
Performance prediction for OpenMP workloads on heterogeneous embedded SoCs is challenging due to complex interactions between task DAG structure, control-flow irregularity, cache
and branch behavior, and thermal dynamics; classical heuristics struggle under workload irregularity, tabular regressors discard structural information, and model-free RL risks
overheating resource-constrained devices. We introduce GraphPerf-RT, the first surrogate that unifies task DAG topology, CFG-derived code semantics, and runtime context (per-core
DVFS, thermal state, utilization) in a heterogeneous graph representation with typed edges encoding precedence, placement, and contention. Multi-task evidential heads predict
makespan, energy, cache and branch misses, and utilization with calibrated uncertainty (Normal-Inverse-Gamma), enabling risk-aware scheduling that filters low-confidence rollouts.
We validate GraphPerf-RT on three embedded ARM platforms (Jetson TX2, Jetson Orin NX, RUBIK Pi), achieving R^2 > 0.95 with well-calibrated uncertainty (ECE < 0.05). To
demonstrate end-to-end scheduling utility, we integrate the surrogate with four RL methods on Jetson TX2: single-agent model-free (SAMFRL), single-agent model-based (SAMBRL),
multi-agent model-free (MAMFRL-D3QN), and multi-agent model-based (MAMBRL-D3QN). Experiments across 5 seeds (200 episodes each) show that MAMBRL-D3QN with GraphPerf-RT as the
world model achieves 66% makespan reduction (0.97 +/- 0.35s) and 82% energy reduction (0.006 +/- 0.005J) compared to model-free baselines, demonstrating that accurate,
uncertainty-aware surrogates enable effective model-based planning on thermally constrained embedded systems.