Exploring Energy/Performance Tradeoffs in Shared Memory MPSoCs: Snoop-Based Cache Coherence vs. Software Solutions

Mirko Loghi (1) , Massimo Poncino (2)

1 UNIVR | DI - Department of Computer Science [Verona]
2 Dip. di Automatica e Informatica

Shared memory is a common interprocessor communication paradigm for single-chip multi-processor platforms. Snoop-based cache coherence is a very successful technique that provides a clean shared-memory programming abstraction in general-purpose chip multi-processors, but there is no consensus on its usage in resource-constrained multiprocessor systems on chips (MPSoCs) for embedded applications. This work aims at providing a comparative energy and performance analysis of cache coherence support schemes in MPSoCs. Thanks to the use of a complete multi-processor simulation platform, which relies on accurate technology-homogeneous power models, we were able to explore different cache-coherent shared-memory communication schemes for a number of cache configurations and workloads.

Domaines: Architectures Matérielles [cs.AR]; Electronique

Mirko Loghi, Massimo Poncino. Exploring Energy/Performance Tradeoffs in Shared Memory MPSoCs: Snoop-Based Cache Coherence vs. Software Solutions. DATE'05, Mar 2005, Munich, Germany. pp.508-513. ⟨hal-00181562⟩