Title
PS-Dir: a scalable two-level directory cache
Abstract
As the number of cores increases in both incoming and future chip multiprocessors, coherence protocols must address novel hardware structures in order to scale in terms of performance, power, and area. It is well known that most blocks accessed by parallel applications are private (i.e., accessed by a single core). These blocks present different directory requirements and behavior than shared blocks. Based on this fact, this paper proposes a two-level directory cache that tracks shared blocks in a small and fast first-level cache and private blocks in a larger and slower second-level cache, namely Shared and Private caches, respectively. Speed and area reasons suggest the use of eDRAM technology much dense but slower than SRAM technology for the Private cache, which in turn brings energy savings. Experimental results for a 16-core system show improvements in performance by 11.1%, in area by 25.4%, and in energy consumption by 20.5% compared to a conventional directory cache.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1145/2370816.2370891
PACT
Keywords
DocType
ISSN
blocks present different directory,scalable two-level directory cache,sram technology,slower second-level cache,edram technology,conventional directory cache,area reason,two-level directory cache,first-level cache,energy consumption,private cache,multicore,cache coherence
Conference
1089-795X
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-5090-6609-4
6
0.41
References 
Authors
5
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Joan J. Valls191.83
Alberto Ros238432.60
Julio Sahuquillo342053.71
María E. Gómez41155.70
José Duato53481294.85