Adaptive Memory Controller for High-performance Multi-channel Memory

Abstract

Abstract-As the number of CPU/GPU cores and IPs in SOC increases and applications require explosive memory bandwidth, simultaneously achieving good throughput and fairness in the memory system among interfering applications is very challenging. Recent works proposed priority-based thread scheduling and channel partitioning to improve throughput and fairness. However, combining these different approaches leads to performance and fairness degradation. In this paper, we analyze the problems incurred when combining priority-based scheduling and channel partitioning and propose dynamic priority thread scheduling and adaptive channel partitioning method. In addition, we propose dynamic address mapping to further optimize the proposed scheme. Combining proposed methods could enhance weighted speedup and fairness for memory intensive applications by 4.2% and 10.2% over TCM or by 19.7% and 19.9% over FR-FCFS on average whereas the proposed scheme requires space less than TCM by 8%.

Proposal of an Adaptive Fault Tolerance Mechanism to Tolerate Intermittent Faults in RAM

“…The operating system monitors the number of errors corrected on each memory line, and when the number of errors on a line begins to exceed the strength of the currently used ECC, the ECC strength is adaptively increased while the memory capacity reduces. In Reference [49], Kim et al propose an adaptive memory controller that can opt between multiple scheduling schemes to enhance memory performance. These adaptive systems are software implemented, and they are not applied to tolerate intermittent faults.…”

“…These adaptive systems are software implemented, and they are not applied to tolerate intermittent faults. Particularly, the proposal in [49] is devoted exclusively to enhance performance. More recently, there are efforts to develop adaptive hardware schemes to enhance the reliability and/or yield of NAND flash memories ( [50,51], out of the scope of this work) and PCM.…”