Paper Info
Title
The Hierarchical Multi-Bank DRAM: A High-Performance Architecture for Memory Integrated with Processors
Abstract
A microprocessor integrated with DRAM on the same die has the potential to improve system performance by reducing the memory latency and improving the memory bandwidth. However, a high performance microprocessor will typically send more accesses than the DRAM can handle due to the long cycle time of the embedded DRAM, especially in applications with significant memory requirements. A multi-bank DRAM can hide the long cycle time by allowing the DRAM to process multiple accesses in parallel, but it will incur a significant area penalty and will therefore restrict the density of the embedded DRAM main memory. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical multi-bank DRAM architecture to achieve high system performance with a minimal area penalty. In this architecture, the independent memory banks are each divided into many semi-independent subbanks that share I/O and decoder resources. A hierarchical multi-bank DRAM with 4 main banks each composed of 32 subbanks occupies approximately the same area as a conventional 4 bank DRAM while performing like a 32 bank one - up to 65% better than a conventional 4 bank DRAM when integrated with a single-chip multiprocessor.
Year
DOI
Venue
1997
10.1109/ARVLSI.1997.634862
ARVLSI
Keywords
Field
DocType
memory integrated,memory latency,memory bandwidth,high-performance architecture,long cycle time,hierarchical multi-bank dram,multi-bank dram,embedded dram main memory,hierarchical multi-bank dram architecture,embedded dram,bank dram,independent memory bank,computer architecture,system performance,cycle time,bandwidth,high performance computing
Dram,Registered memory,Interleaved memory,Computer science,Static random-access memory,Universal memory,Computer hardware,CAS latency,Memory rank,Memory controller,Embedded system
Conference
Volume
ISBN
Citations 
8
0-8186-7913-1
12
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.84
3
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Tadaaki Yamauchi1214.09
Lance Hammond252066.61
Kunle Olukotun34532373.50