Efficient Strategies for Software-Only Directory Protocols in Shared-Memory Multiprocessors
| Document type: | Conference Papers |
|---|---|
| Peer reviewed: | Yes |
| Author(s): | Håkan Grahn, Per Stenström |
| Title: | Efficient Strategies for Software-Only Directory Protocols in Shared-Memory Multiprocessors |
| Conference name: | 22nd Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture |
| Year: | 1995 |
| Pagination: | 38-47 |
| ISBN: | 0-89791-698-0 (hft.) 0-7803-3000-5 (inb.) 0-7803-3001-3 (mikrofiche) |
| Publisher: | IEEE Computer Society Press |
| City: | Santa Margherita Ligure; Italy |
| Organization: | Blekinge Institute of Technology |
| Department: | Dept. of Computer Science and Business Administration (Institutionen för datavetenskap och ekonomi) Dept. of Computer Science and Business Administration S-372 25 Ronneby +46 455 780 00 http://www.ide.hk-r.se/ |
| Authors e-mail: | hakan.grahn@ide.hk-r.se |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | The cost, complexity, and inflexibility of hardware-based directory protocols motivate us to study the performance implications of protocols that emulate directory management using software handlers executed on the compute processors. An important performance limitation of such software-only protocols is that software latency associated with directory management ends up on the critical memory access path for read miss transactions. We propose five strategies that support efficient data transfers in hardware whereas directory management is handled at a slower pace in the background by software handlers. Simulations show that this approach can remove the directory-management latency from the memory access path. Whereas the directory is managed in software, the hardware mechanisms must access the memory state in order to enable data transfers at a high speed. Overall, our strategies reach between 60% and 86% of the hardware-based protocol performance. |
| Subject: | Computer Science\Computersystems |
| Keywords: | Network protocols; Distributed computer systems; Computational complexity; Data handling; Critical path analysis; Computer software; Data transfer; Buffer storage; Program processors |
