  Adaptable computing is an increasingly important paradigm that specializes
system resources to variable application requirements, environmental
conditions, or user requirements. Adapting computing resources to variable
application requirements (or application phases) is otherwise known as
phase-based optimization. Phase-based optimization takes advantage of
application phases, or execution intervals of an application, that behave
similarly, to enable effective and beneficial adaptability. In order for
phase-based optimization to be effective, the phases must first be classified
to determine when application phases begin and end, and ensure that system
resources are accurately specialized. In this paper, we present a survey of
phase classification techniques that have been proposed to exploit the
advantages of adaptable computing through phase-based optimization. We focus on
recent techniques and classify these techniques with respect to several factors
in order to highlight their similarities and differences. We divide the
techniques by their major defining characteristics---online/offline and
serial/parallel. In addition, we discuss other characteristics such as
prediction and detection techniques, the characteristics used for prediction,
interval type, etc. We also identify gaps in the state-of-the-art and discuss
future research directions to enable and fully exploit the benefits of
adaptable computing.
