Design-Induced Latency Variation in Modern DRAM Chips
Donghyuk Lee, Samira Khan, Lavanya Subramanian, Saugata Ghose, Rachata Ausavarungnirun, Gennady Pekhimenko, Vivek Seshadri, Onur Mutlu · 2017
Variation has been shown to exist across the cells within a modern DRAM chip. Prior work has studied and exploited several forms of variation, such as manufacturing-process- or temperature-induced variation. We empirically demonstrate a new form of variation that exists within a real DRAM chip, induced by the design and placement of different components in the DRAM chip: different regions in DRAM, based on their relative distances from the peripheral structures, require different minimum access latencies for reliable operation. In particular, we show that in most real DRAM chips, cells closer to the peripheral structures can be accessed much faster than cells that are farther. We call this phenomenon design-induced variation in DRAM. Our goals are to i) understand design-induced variation that exists in real, state-of-the-art DRAM chips, ii) exploit it to develop low-cost mechanisms that can dynamically find and use the lowest latency at which to operate a DRAM chip reliably, and, thus, iii) improve overall system performance while ensuring reliable system operation. To this end, we first experimentally demonstrate and analyze designed-induced variation in modern DRAM devices by testing and characterizing 96 DIMMs (768 DRAM chips). Our experimental study shows that i) modern DRAM chips exhibit design-induced latency variation in both row and column directions, ii) access latency gradually increases in the row direction within a DRAM cell array (mat) and this pattern repeats in every mat, and iii) some columns require higher latency than others due to the internal hierarchical organization of the DRAM chip.