Efficient STT-RAM last-level-cache architecture to replace DRAM cache

Publikation: Beitrag in Buch/Konferenzbericht/Sammelband/GutachtenBeitrag in KonferenzbandBeigetragenBegutachtung

Beitragende

Abstract

Recent research has proposed die-stacked Last Level Cache (LLC) to overcome the Memory Wall. Lately, Spin-Transfer-Torque Random Access Memory (STT-RAM) caches have been recommended as they provide improved energy efficiency compared to DRAM caches. However, the recently proposed STT-RAM cache architecture unnecessarily dissipates energy by fetching unneeded cache lines into the row buffer. In this paper, we propose a Selective Read Policy for STT-RAM.This policy only fetches those cache lines into the row buffer that are likely to be reused. This reduces the number of cache line reads and thereby reduces the energy consumption. Further, we propose two key performance optimizations namely Row Buffer Tags Bypass Policy and LLC Data Cache. Both optimizations reduce the LLC access latency and therefore improve the overall performance. For evaluation, we implement our proposed architecture in the Zesto simulator and run different combinations of SPEC2006 benchmarks on an 8-core system. We show that our synergetic policies reduce the average LLC dynamic energy consumption by 72.6% and improve the system performance by 1.3% compared to the recently proposed STT-RAM LLC. Compared to the state-of-theart DRAM LLC, our architecture reduces the LLC dynamic energy consumption by 90.6% and improves system performance by 1.4%.

Details

OriginalspracheEnglisch
TitelMEMSYS 2017 - Proceedings of the International Symposium on Memory Systems
Herausgeber (Verlag)Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), New York
Seiten141-151
Seitenumfang11
ISBN (elektronisch)9781450353359
PublikationsstatusVeröffentlicht - 2 Okt. 2017
Peer-Review-StatusJa

Konferenz

Titel2017 International Symposium on Memory Systems, MEMSYS 2017
Dauer2 - 5 Oktober 2017
StadtWashington
LandUSA/Vereinigte Staaten

Externe IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-5007-445X/work/141545557