PEARL: Power- and Energy-Aware Multicore Intermittent Computing

Abstract: Low-power multicore platforms are suitable for running data-intensive tasks in parallel, but they are highly inefficient for computing on intermittent power. In this work, we present PEARL (PowEr And eneRgy-aware MuLticore Intermittent Computing), a novel systems support that can make existing multicore microcontroller (MCU) platforms suitable for efficient intermittent computing. PEARL achieves this by leveraging only a three-threshold voltage tracking circuit and an external fast non-volatile memory, which multicore MCUs can smoothly interface. PEARL software runtime manages these components and performs energy- and power-aware adaptation of the multicore configuration to introduce minimal backup overheads and boost performance. Our evaluation shows that PEARL outperforms the state-of-the-art solutions by up to 30x and consumes up to 32x less energy.