To stride or not to stride the memory access?

Research output: Contribution to book/Conference proceedings/Anthology/ReportConference contributionContributed

Contributors

  • Lennart Schmidt - , Chair of Databases (Author)
  • Roland Kühn - , Dortmund University of Technology (Author)
  • Matti Krause - , Dortmund University of Technology (Author)
  • Jens Teubner - , Dortmund University of Technology (Author)
  • Wolfgang Lehner - , Chair of Databases, Aalborg University (Author)
  • Dirk Habich - , Chair of Databases (Author)

Abstract

Due to the increasing gap between CPU performance and memory bandwidth, memory access patterns play more and more a significant role for efficient data processing. The current core assumption is that a sequential access pattern delivers the best performance, especially when the data to be processed is stored in adjacent memory locations (contiguous memory). Given the continuous advances in memory technologies, it is of course questionable whether this assumption still holds true. To answer this question, we present a comprehensive experimental comparison of the sequential and the strided access pattern for data stored in contiguous memory on modern disruptive memory systems in this paper. As we are going to show, the core assumption must be revised, as the strided access pattern with a well-chosen stride size clearly outperforms the sequential access pattern. Even a SIMD-accelerated sequential access is considerably slower than the best-performing scalar strided access. In particular, we explain the differences, highlight further advantages, and present open challenges of the strided access pattern on disruptive memory systems.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationDIMES 2025 - Proceedings of the 3rd Workshop on Disruptive Memory Systems, Part of SOSP 2025
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery (ACM), New York
Pages19-26
Number of pages8
ISBN (electronic)979-8-4007-2226-4
Publication statusPublished - 13 Oct 2025
Peer-reviewedNo

External IDs

Scopus 105020783675

Keywords

Research priority areas of TU Dresden

DFG Classification of Subject Areas according to Review Boards

Subject groups, research areas, subject areas according to Destatis

Keywords

  • High-Bandwidth Memory, Analysis, Benchmark, Memory Access Pattern