A memory controller for improved performance of streamed computations on symmetric multiprocessors
Sally A. McKee, Wm. A. Wulf · 2002
The growing disparity between processor and memory speeds has caused memory bandwidth to become the performance bottleneck for many applications. In particular this performance gap severely impacts stream-orientated computations such as (de)compression, encryption, and scientific vector processing. This paper describes the development of an intelligent memory interface that can exploit compiler-provided information on streamed memory access patterns to improve memory bandwidth. Simulation results show that such shared-memory multiprocessor systems can deliver nearly the full attainable bandwidth with relatively modest hardware costs.