Computer Architecture and Systems Laboratory

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High Efficiency Computing

This theme is motivated by several trends including i) rising importance of on-chip interconnection structures between cores and within the cache memory system, ii) the narrowing of the latency gap between DRAM access and inter-socket/inter-board interconnects, and iii) rigid policies for memory and interconnect operation. This theme initially seeks to identify and mitigate inherent efficiencies in current architectural structures via hardware enhancements and accompanying software structures for off-line and on-line customization of architectural attributes to improve performance and energy efficiency.

On-chip we are addressing management of cache resources and interconnects while off-chip we are exploring implementation and management of large 64-bit physical memory spaces. Memory-to-memory latency is a critical performance determinant of scalable computing systems. The use of modern interconnect fabrics tightly coupled to the processor-memory hierarchy such as AMD’s HyperTransportTM (HT) and Intel’s Quickpath (QPI) have the potential to provide the lowest end-to-end transfer latency for systems comprised of tens to thousands of multicore nodes. However, to productively harness this raw capability, it must be exercised in the context of a global system model that defines how the system wide address space is deployed and utilized. Towards this end we advocate and explore the implications, architectural support and implementation of a Dynamic Partitioned Global Address Space (DPGAS) model for the implementation of scalable cluster systems. A prototype implementation based on HT-Over-Ethernet (HToE) is being developed that is suitable for experimentation and measurement. In particular, we are concerned about the portability of the model and software implementations across future generations of processors with increasing physical address ranges focusing on non-coherent address spaces with region based memory semantics where coherency is an application specific, customizable attribute.


Sponsor: National Science Foundation.

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