Characterizing Variability in Heterogeneous Edge Systems: A Methodology & Case Study

Abstract

This study offers a methodology to characterize intra- and inter-node variability and applies it on two heterogeneous edge platforms (the NVIDIA Jetson AGX and Nano) for performance and power consumption. Firstly, we explore intra-node variability: investigate to what degree deployment decisions can limit it, highlight that it is unavoidable, and offer a scale so that one can compare to what other studies report. Secondly, we characterize inter-node variability by answering two questions: (i) Are the platforms we study statistically different in terms of the applications’ power draw and runtime? and (ii) What is the magnitude of these differences? Finally, we attempt to answer the question of why is it paramount to characterize variability and take it into account? to achieve this, we discuss examples from the compiler and runtime optimization domains.