Analysis of critical architectural and program parameters in a hierarchical shared-memory multiprocessor

Josep Torrellas, John Hennessy, Thierry Weil

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Scalable shared-memory multiprocessors are the subject of much current research, but little is known about the performance behavior of these machines. This paper studies the performance effects of two machine characteristics and two program characteristics that seem to be major factors in determining the performance of a hierarchical shared-memory machine. We develop an analytical model of the traffic in a machine loosely based on Stanford's DASH multiprocessor and use program parameters extracted from multiprocessor traces to study its performance. It is shown that both locality in the data reference stream and the amount of data sharing in a program have an important impact on performance. Although less obvious, the bandwidth within each cluster in the hierarchy also has a significant performance effect. Optimizations that improve the intracluster cache coherence protocol or increase the bandwidth within a cluster can be quite effective.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication1990 ACM SIGMETRICS Conf Meas Model Comput Syst
Editors Anon
PublisherPubl by ACM
Pages163-172
Number of pages10
ISBN (Print)0897913590
StatePublished - 1990
Externally publishedYes
Event1990 ACM SIGMETRICS Conference on Measurement & Modeling of Computer Systems - Boulder, CO, USA
Duration: May 22 1990May 25 1990

Publication series

Name1990 ACM SIGMETRICS Conf Meas Model Comput Syst

Other

Other1990 ACM SIGMETRICS Conference on Measurement & Modeling of Computer Systems
CityBoulder, CO, USA
Period5/22/905/25/90

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Engineering

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