On randomly interleaved memories

  • Authors:
  • Ram Raghavan;John P. Hayes

  • Affiliations:
  • Advanced Computer Architecture Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan;Advanced Computer Architecture Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 1990 ACM/IEEE conference on Supercomputing
  • Year:
  • 1990

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Abstract

Memory address interleaving, where an address k generated by a processor is mapped into the memory bank k (mod m), is a basic technique for increasing memory bandwidth. However, the access conflicts that can occur in interleaved memories sometimes reduce the bandwidth gain significantly, especially in vector processors. Recently, a few random interleaving schemes have been proposed to reduce memory contention. We define a class of such methods, called LINEAR, that uses linear transformations of addresses for randomization and includes those used in the RP3 and Cydra 5 computers. After identifying a basic deficiency of LINEAR, we define a new class of random interleaving methods called RANDOM-H and, through comparative analysis, show that RANDOM-H performs better than LINEAR. To illustrate RANDOM-H, we describe MASH, which is a random interleaving technique based on multiplicative hashing. Our simulation results indicate that MASH generally performs better than typical linear methods.