TMA: A Trap-Based Memory Architecture

Abstract

The advances in semiconductor technology have set the shared-memory server trend towards processors with multiple cores per die and multiple threads per core. We believe that this technology shift forces a reevaluation of how to interconnect multiple such chips to form larger systems.

This paper argues that by adding support for coherence traps in future chip multiprocessors, large-scale server systems can be formed at a much lower cost. This is due to shorter design time, verification and time to market when compared to its traditional all-hardware counter part. In the proposed trap-based memory architecture (TMA), software trap handlers are responsible for obtaining read/write permission, whereas the coherence trap hardware is responsible for the actual permission check.

In this paper we evaluate a TMA implementation (called TMA Lite) with a minimal amount of hardware extensions, all contained within the processor. The proposed mechanisms for coherence trap processing should not affect the critical path and have a negligible cost in terms of area and power for most processor designs.

Our evaluation is based on detailed full system simulation using out-of-order processors with one or two dual-threaded cores per die as processing nodes. The results show that a TMA based distributed shared memory system can perform on par with a highly optimized hardware based design.

Available as PDF (520 kB)

BibTeX file entry: Zeffer:2006:jun2