TY - GEN
T1 - When to forget
T2 - 17th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference, ASP-DAC 2012
AU - Swaminathan, Karthik
AU - Pisolkar, Raghav
AU - Xu, Cong
AU - Narayanan, Vijaykrishnan
PY - 2012/4/26
Y1 - 2012/4/26
N2 - The benefits of using STT-RAMs as an alternative to SRAMs are being examined in great detail. However their comparatively higher write latencies and energies continue to be roadblocks for migrating to MRAM based technology in memory hierarchies. In this paper, we present a novel method by which we demonstrate significant energy reduction in writing to the STT-RAM cell by relaxing its non-volatility property. We exploit this characteristic for optimizing system-level properties such as garbage collection. By categorizing the objects based on their lifetimes it is possible to tune the data retention time of the STT-RAM to minimize the write energy. Our scheme yielded 37% reduction in dynamic energy, 88% reduction in leakage and 85% improvement in the Energy-Delay Product over a corresponding SRAM based memory structure.
AB - The benefits of using STT-RAMs as an alternative to SRAMs are being examined in great detail. However their comparatively higher write latencies and energies continue to be roadblocks for migrating to MRAM based technology in memory hierarchies. In this paper, we present a novel method by which we demonstrate significant energy reduction in writing to the STT-RAM cell by relaxing its non-volatility property. We exploit this characteristic for optimizing system-level properties such as garbage collection. By categorizing the objects based on their lifetimes it is possible to tune the data retention time of the STT-RAM to minimize the write energy. Our scheme yielded 37% reduction in dynamic energy, 88% reduction in leakage and 85% improvement in the Energy-Delay Product over a corresponding SRAM based memory structure.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84859942980&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1109/ASPDAC.2012.6164965
DO - 10.1109/ASPDAC.2012.6164965
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84859942980
SN - 9781467307727
T3 - Proceedings of the Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference, ASP-DAC
SP - 311
EP - 316
BT - ASP-DAC 2012 - 17th Asia and South Pacific Design Automation Conference
Y2 - 30 January 2012 through 2 February 2012
ER -