Eidola: Modeling Multi-GPU Network Communication Traffic in Distributed AI Workloads

Eidola addresses the problem of modeling irregular and transient inter-GPU communication traffic in distributed AI workloads, which existing tools fail to capture due to fine-grained synchronization and peer-to-peer writes. The method introduces a scalable gem5 extension that uses annotated timing profiles from real applications to emulate peer-to-peer GPU writes with cycle-level precision. Experimental evidence demonstrates Eidola's effectiveness by reproducing variability in fused kernel execution and confirming reductions in polling-related memory traffic via a SyncMon-inspired mechanism. This matters because Eidola provides a flexible platform for architectural exploration of interconnect bandwidth and latency in modern multi-GPU systems.