TY - JOUR
T1 - Volatile STT-RAM scratchpad design and data allocation for low energy
AU - Rodríguez, Gabriel
AU - Tourinõ, Juan
AU - Kandemir, Mahmut T.
PY - 2014/12/1
Y1 - 2014/12/1
N2 - On-chip power consumption is one of the fundamental challenges of current technology scaling. Cache memories consume a sizable part of this power, particularly due to leakage energy. STT-RAM is one of several new memory technologies that have been proposed in order to improve power while preserving performance. It features high density and low leakage, but at the expense of write energy and performance. This article explores the use of STT-RAM-based scratchpad memories that trade nonvolatility in exchange for faster and less energetically expensive accesses, making them feasible for on-chip implementation in embedded systems. A novel multiretention scratchpad partitioning is proposed, featuring multiple storage spaces with different retention, energy, and performance characteristics. A customized compiler-based allocation algorithm suitable for use with such a scratchpad organization is described. Our experiments indicate that a multiretention STT-RAM scratchpad can provide energy savings of 53% with respect to an iso-area, hardware-managed SRAM cache.
AB - On-chip power consumption is one of the fundamental challenges of current technology scaling. Cache memories consume a sizable part of this power, particularly due to leakage energy. STT-RAM is one of several new memory technologies that have been proposed in order to improve power while preserving performance. It features high density and low leakage, but at the expense of write energy and performance. This article explores the use of STT-RAM-based scratchpad memories that trade nonvolatility in exchange for faster and less energetically expensive accesses, making them feasible for on-chip implementation in embedded systems. A novel multiretention scratchpad partitioning is proposed, featuring multiple storage spaces with different retention, energy, and performance characteristics. A customized compiler-based allocation algorithm suitable for use with such a scratchpad organization is described. Our experiments indicate that a multiretention STT-RAM scratchpad can provide energy savings of 53% with respect to an iso-area, hardware-managed SRAM cache.
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U2 - 10.1145/2669556
DO - 10.1145/2669556
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84917685948
SN - 1544-3566
VL - 11
JO - ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization
JF - ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization
IS - 4
M1 - 38
ER -