ECAP: energy‐efficient caching for prefetch blocks in tiled chip multiprocessors. Issue 6 (8th August 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Deb, Dipika; Jose, John; Palesi, Maurizio
• Is Part Of: IET computers & digital techniques. Volume 13:Issue 6(2019)
• Page Start: 417
• Page End: 428
• Publication Date: 2019-08-08
• Subjects: cache storage -- virtual storage -- energy conservation -- power consumption -- power aware computing -- telecommunication traffic -- multiprocessing systems -- microprocessor chips; ECAP -- tiled chip multiprocessor -- energy consumption -- system performance -- nonuniform load distribution -- L1 cache usage pattern -- prefetching -- cache pollution -- cache misses -- network traffic -- power consumption -- average memory access time -- virtual cache memories -- memory footprint -- prefetch placement technique -- prefetch block placement strategy -- memory access latency -- packet movement rate -- energy‐efficient caching for prefetch blocks; Computers -- Periodicals; Digital electronics -- Periodicals; Computer engineering -- Periodicals; Computer architecture -- Periodicals; Computer organization -- Periodicals; 621.39
• DOI: 10.1049/iet-cdt.2019.0035
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1751-8601

Abstract

Abstract : With the increase in processing cores performance have increased, but energy consumption and memory access latency have become a crucial factor in determining system performance. In tiled chip multiprocessor, tiles are interconnected using a network and different application runs in different tiles. Non‐uniform load distribution of applications results in varying L1 cache usage pattern. Application with larger memory footprint uses most of its L1 cache. Prefetching on top of such application may cause cache pollution by evicting useful demand blocks from the cache. This generates further cache misses which increases the network traffic. Therefore, an inefficient prefetch block placement strategy may result in generating more traffic that may increase congestion and power consumption in the network. This also dampens the packet movement rate which increases miss penalty at the cores thereby affecting Average Memory Access Time (AMAT). The authors propose an energy‐efficient caching strategy for prefetch blocks, ECAP. It uses the less used cache set of nearby tiles running light applications as virtual cache memories for the tiles running high applications to place the prefetch blocks. ECAP reduces AMAT, router and link power in NoC by 23.54%, 14.42%, and 27%, respectively as compared to the conventional prefetch placement technique.