Name
Abstract | ||
|---|---|---|
Large numbers of logical registers can improve performance by allowing fast access to multiple subroutine contexts (register windows) and multiple thread contexts (multithreading). Support for both of these together requires a multiplicative number of registers that quickly becomes prohibitive. We overcome this limitation with the virtual context architecture (VCA), a new register-file architecture that virtualizes logical register contexts. VCA works by treating the physical registers as a cache of a much larger memorymapped logical register space. Complete contexts, whether activation records or threads, are no longer required to reside in their entirety in the physical register file. A VCA implementation of register windows on a single-threaded machine reduces data cache accesses by 20%, providing the same performance as a conventional machine while requiring one fewer cache port. Using VCA to support multithreading enables a four-thread machine to use half as many physical registers without a significant performance loss. VCA naturally extends to support both multithreading and register windows, providing higher performance with significantly fewer registers than a conventional machine. |
Year | DOI | Venue |
|---|---|---|
2005 | 10.1109/MICRO.2005.21 | Barcelona |
Keywords | Field | DocType |
physical register file,four-thread machine,register windows,larger memorymapped logical register,vca implementation,logical register context,conventional machine,physical register,logical register,fewer register,multi threading,register file,multithreading,computer architecture | Multithreading,Computer science,Cache,Parallel computing,Register file,FLAGS register,Thread (computing),Register window,Memory type range register,Processor register,Operating system | Conference |
ISSN | ISBN | Citations |
1072-4451 | 0-7695-2440-0 | 17 |
PageRank | References | Authors |
0.71 | 20 | 4 |
Name | Order | Citations | PageRank |
|---|---|---|---|
| David W. Oehmke | 1 | 17 | 0.71 |
| Nathan Binkert | 2 | 882 | 49.23 |
| Trevor Mudge | 3 | 6139 | 659.74 |
| Steven K. Reinhardt | 4 | 3885 | 226.69 |