@inproceedings{
chaudhary2023comet,
title={{COMET}: Cost Model Explanation Framework},
author={Isha Chaudhary and Alex Renda and Charith Mendis and Gagandeep Singh},
booktitle={XAI in Action: Past, Present, and Future Applications},
year={2023},
url={https://openreview.net/forum?id=YVQSGT6ME0}
}
Cost models predict the cost of executing given assembly code basic blocks on a
specific microarchitecture. Recently, neural cost models have been shown to be
fairly accurate and easy to construct. They can replace heavily engineered analytical
cost models used in compilers. However, their black-box nature discourages their
adoption. In this work, we develop the first framework, COMET, for generating
faithful, generalizable, and intuitive explanations for neural cost models. We
generate and compare COMET’s explanations for the popular neural cost model,
Ithemal against those for an accurate CPU simulation-based cost model, uiCA. We
obtain an empirical inverse correlation between the prediction errors of Ithemal
and uiCA and the granularity of basic block features in COMET’s explanations for
them, indicating potential reasons for Ithemal’s higher error with respect to uiCA.
COMET: Neural Cost Model Explanation Framework
Isha Chaudhary Alex Renda Charith Mendis Gagandeep Singh