Paper Info
Title
Data sharing in multi-threaded applications and its impact on chip design
Abstract
Analytical modeling is becoming an increasingly important technique used in the design of chip multiprocessors. Most such models assume multi-programmed workload mixes and either ignore or oversimplify the behavior of multi-threaded applications. In particular, data sharing observed in multi-threaded applications, and its impact on chip design decisions, has not been well characterized in prior analytical modeling work. In this work we describe why data sharing behavior is hard to capture in an analytical model, and study why, and by how much, past attempts have fallen short. We propose a new methodology to measure the impact of data sharing, which quantifies the reduction in on-chip cache miss rates attributable solely to the presence of data sharing. We then extend an existing analytical performance model for a many-core chip by incorporating into it the impact of data sharing in contemporary multi-threaded workloads. We use this analytical model to explore the chip design space for a hypothetical many-core chip of the future. We find that the optimal design point is substantially different when the impact of data sharing is modeled compared to when it is not. Data sharing can enable reassigning a significant fraction of the total chip area (up to 16%, per our model of a future many-core) from cache resources to core resources, which, in turn, improves the overall chip throughput (by up to 58%).
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1109/ISPASS.2012.6189219
ISPASS
Keywords
Field
DocType
cache storage,integrated circuit design,microprocessor chips,multi-threading,analytical modeling,chip design,chip multiprocessor design,contemporary multithreaded workload,data sharing,hypothetical many-core chip,multithreaded application,on-chip cache miss rate reduction
Data modeling,Multithreading,Computer architecture,System on a chip,Cache,Computer science,Parallel computing,Data sharing,Real-time computing,Chip,Throughput,Benchmark (computing)
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
10
0.52
13
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Anil Krishna11918.14
Ahmad Samih2412.84
Yan Solihin32057111.56