Memory Performance and Cache Coherency Effects on an Intel Nehalem Multiprocessor System

Research output: Contribution to book/conference proceedings/anthology/reportConference contributionContributedpeer-review

Abstract

Today's microprocessors have complex memory subsystems with several cache levels. The efficient use of this memory hierarchy is crucial to gain optimal performance, especially on multicore processors. Unfortunately, many implementation details of these processors are not publicly available. In this paper we present such fundamental details of the newly introduced Intel Nehalem microarchitecture with its integrated memory controller, quick path interconnect, and ccNUMA architecture. Our analysis is based on sophisticated benchmarks to measure the latency and bandwidth between different locations in the memory subsystem. Special care is taken to control the coherency state of the data to gain insight into performance relevant implementation details of the cache coherency protocol. Based on these benchmarks we present undocumented performance data and architectural properties.

Details

Original languageGerman
Title of host publication2009 18th International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques
PublisherIEEE Computer Society, Washington
Pages261-270
Number of pages10
ISBN (print)978-0-7695-3771-9
Publication statusPublished - 16 Sept 2009
Peer-reviewedYes

Conference

Title2009 18th International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques
Duration12 - 16 September 2009
LocationRaleigh, NC, USA

External IDs

Scopus 70449643566
ORCID /0000-0002-8491-770X/work/141543288
ORCID /0009-0003-0666-4166/work/151475588

Keywords

Keywords

  • Multiprocessing systems, Microarchitecture, Bandwidth, Delay, Multicore processing, Protocols, High performance computing, Performance gain, Scalability, Yarn