Title
OCDIMM: Scaling the DRAM Memory Wall Using WDM Based Optical Interconnects
Abstract
We present OCDIMM (Optically Connected DIMM), a CPU-DRAM interface that takes advantage of multiwavelength optical interconnects. We show that OCDIMM has at least three key benefits when compared to alternatives such as FBDIMM (Fully Buffered DIMM), which is used in recent products from Sun [1] and Intel. First, replacing the multi-hop store-and-forward network in the FBDIMM architecture by a WDM (wavelength-division multiplexing) based optical interconnect results in significantly lower latency (up to 50% reduction in some configurations). Second, it is scalable to much higher capacities (such as 32 DIMMs perchannel) with only a modest degradation in latency. Third, due to the higher data rate of an optical interface and the concurrency offered by multiple wavelengths, OCDIMM offers up to a 90% improvement in memory bandwidth. Most importantly, these benefits can be obtained using off-the-shelf DRAM devices, by making simple modifications to the DIMM circuit board and the memory controller.
Year
DOI
Venue
2008
10.1109/HOTI.2008.25
Hot Interconnects
Keywords
Field
DocType
DRAM chips,integrated circuit interconnections,optical interconnections,wavelength division multiplexing,CPU-DRAM interface,DRAM memory wall scaling,WDM,memory controller,multiwavelength optical interconnects,off-the-shelf DRAM devices,optical connected DIMM,wavelength-division multiplexing
Wavelength-division multiplexing,Dram,NVDIMM,DIMM,Memory bandwidth,Fully Buffered DIMM,Computer science,Parallel computing,Memory controller,Optical interconnect
Conference
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
1550-4794
12
0.98
References 
Authors
8
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Amit Hadke1120.98
Tony Benavides2142.05
S. J. B. Yoo347142.20
Rajeevan Amirtharajah425163.19
Venkatesh Akella535733.69