Title
Application-specific memory partitioning for joint energy and lifetime optimization
Abstract
Power management of caches based on turning idle cache lines into a low-energy state is also beneficial for the aging effects caused by Negative Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI), provided that idleness is correctly exploited; unlike energy, aging, being a measure of delay, is in fact a worst-case metric. In this work we propose an application-specific partitioned cache architecture in which a cache is organized as a set of independently addressable sub-blocks; by properly using the idleness of the various banks to drive how the partition is determined, it is possible to extend the effective lifetime of the cache while saving extra energy. Two are the distinctive features of our approach: First, we allow the cache sub-blocks age at different rates, achieving a sort of graceful degradation of performance while extending lifetime beyond the limits of previously published works. Proper architectural arrangements are also introduced in order to cope with the issue of using a progressively smaller cache. Second, the sub-blocks have non-uniform sizes, so to maximally exploit idleness for joint energy and aging optimization. Simulation results show that it is possible to extend the effective lifetime of the cache by more than 2x with respect to previous methods, while concurrently improving energy consumption by about 50%.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1109/DATE.2012.6176498
DATE
Keywords
Field
DocType
cache sub-blocks age,application-specific memory,idle cache line,energy consumption,application-specific partitioned cache architecture,addressable sub-blocks,lifetime optimization,joint energy,extra energy,smaller cache,effective lifetime,negative bias temperature instability,clustering algorithms,indexation,indexing,aging,energy efficiency,measurement,computer architecture
Cache-oblivious algorithm,Cache invalidation,Cache pollution,Computer science,Cache,Parallel computing,Cache-only memory architecture,Real-time computing,Cache algorithms,Cache coloring,Bus sniffing
Conference
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
1530-1591
2
0.40
References 
Authors
15
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Haroon Mahmood181.18
Massimo Poncino246057.48
Mirko Loghi321817.83
Enrico Macii42405349.96