Volatile STT-RAM Scratchpad Design and Data Allocation for Low Energy
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Volatile STT-RAM Scratchpad Design and Data Allocation for Low EnergyDate
2015Citation
Rodríguez, G., Touriño, J., & Kandemir, M. T. (2015). Volatile STT-RAM scratchpad design and data allocation for low energy. ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization (TACO), 11(4), 38.
Abstract
[Abstract] On-chip power consumption is one of the fundamental challenges of current technology scaling. Cache memories consume a sizable part of this power, particularly due to leakage energy. STT-RAM is one of several new memory technologies that have been proposed in order to improve power while preserving performance. It features high density and low leakage, but at the expense of write energy and performance. This article explores the use of STT-RAM--based scratchpad memories that trade nonvolatility in exchange for faster and less energetically expensive accesses, making them feasible for on-chip implementation in embedded systems. A novel multiretention scratchpad partitioning is proposed, featuring multiple storage spaces with different retention, energy, and performance characteristics. A customized compiler-based allocation algorithm suitable for use with such a scratchpad organization is described. Our experiments indicate that a multiretention STT-RAM scratchpad can provide energy savings of 53% with respect to an iso-area, hardware-managed SRAM cache.
Keywords
STT-RAM
Low energy
Hardware
Integrated circuits
Hardware validation
Semiconductor memory
Dynamic memory
Low energy
Hardware
Integrated circuits
Hardware validation
Semiconductor memory
Dynamic memory
Editor version
ISSN
1544-3566
1544-3973
1544-3973