TMA: A Trap-Based Memory Architecture

Håkan Zeffer, Zoran Radovic, Martin Karlsson, and Erik Hagersten

December 2005

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 on average perform within 1 percent of a highly optimized hardware based design.

Note: Revised version of Technical Report 2005-015

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