Eliminating Squashes Through Learning Cross-Thread Violations in Speculative Parallelization for Multiprocessors

  • Authors:

  • Marcelo Cintra;Josep Torrellas

  • Affiliations:

  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • HPCA '02 Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture
  • Year:
  • 2002

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Abstract

With speculative thread-level parallelization, codes that cannot be fully compiler-analyzed are aggressively executed in parallel. If the hardware detects a cross-thread dependence violation, it squashes offending threads and resumes execution. Unfortunately, frequent squashing cripples performance.This paper proposes a new framework of hardware mechanisms to eliminate most squashes due to data dependences in multiprocessors. The framework works by learning and predicting violations, and applying delayed disambiguation, value prediction, and stall and release. The framework is suited for directory-based multiprocessors that track memory accesses at the system level with the coarse granularity of memory lines. Simulations of a 16-processor machine show that the framework is very effective. By adding our framework to a speculative CC-NUMA with 64-byte memory lines, we speed-up applications by an average of 4.3 times. Moreover, the resulting system is even 23% faster than a machine that tracks memory accesses at the fine granularity of words - a sophisticated system that is not compatible with mainstream cache coherence protocols.