appendix b. memory hierarchy

Appendix B. Memory Hierarchy

CSCI/ EENG – 641 - W01Computer Architecture 1

Dr. Babak Beheshti

Slides based on the PowerPoint Presentations created by David Patterson as part of the Instructor Resources for the textbook by Hennessy & Patterson

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Outline• Memory hierarchy• Locality• Cache design• Virtual address spaces• Page table layout• TLB (Translation Lookaside Buffers) design

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Since 1980, CPU has outpaced DRAM...

CPU60% per yr2X in 1.5 yrs

DRAM9% per yr2X in 10 yrs

10

DRAM

CPU

Performance(1/latency)

100

1000

1980

2000

1990

Year

Gap grew 50% per year

Q. How do architects address this gap? A. Put smaller, faster “cache”

memories between CPU and DRAM.

Create a “memory hierarchy”.

1977: DRAM faster than microprocessors

Apple ][ (1977)

Steve WozniakSteve

Jobs

CPU: 1000 ns DRAM: 400 ns

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Levels of the Memory Hierarchy

CPU Registers100s Bytes<10s ns

CacheK Bytes10-100 ns1-0.1 cents/bit

Main MemoryM Bytes200ns- 500ns$.0001-.00001 cents /bitDiskG Bytes, 10 ms (10,000,000 ns)

10 - 10 cents/bit-5 -6

CapacityAccess TimeCost

Tapeinfinitesec-min10 -8

Registers

Cache

Memory

Disk

Tape

Instr. Operands

Blocks

Pages

Files

StagingXfer Unit

prog./compiler1-8 bytes

cache cntl8-128 bytes

OS512-4K bytes

user/operatorMbytes

Upper Level

Lower Level

faster

Larger

Memory Hierarchy: Apple iMac G5

iMac G51.6 GHz

07 Reg L1 Inst L1 Data L2 DRAM Disk

Size 1K 64K 32K 512K 256M 80G

LatencyCycles, Time

1,0.6 ns

3,1.9 ns

3,1.9 ns

11,6.9 ns

88,55 ns

107,12 ms

Let programs address a memory space that scales to the disk size, at

a speed that is usually as fast as register access

Managed by compiler

Managed by hardware

Managed by OS,hardware,

application

Goal: Illusion of large, fast, cheap memory

iMac’s PowerPC 970: All caches on-chip

(1K)

Registers 512K

L2

L1 (64K Instruction)

L1 (32K Data)

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The Principle of Locality

• The Principle of Locality:– Program access a relatively small portion of the address space at any instant of time.

• Two Different Types of Locality:– Temporal Locality (Locality in Time): If an item is referenced, it will tend to be referenced

again soon (e.g., loops, reuse)– Spatial Locality (Locality in Space): If an item is referenced, items whose addresses are

close by tend to be referenced soon (e.g., straightline code, array access)

• Last 15 years, HW relied on locality for speed

It is a property of programs which is exploited in machine design.

Programs with locality cache well ...

Donald J. Hatfield, Jeanette Gerald: Program Restructuring for Virtual Memory. IBM Systems Journal 10(3): 168-192 (1971)

Time

Mem

ory

Add

ress

(one

dot

per

acc

ess)

SpatialLocality

Temporal Locality

Bad locality behavior

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Memory Hierarchy: Terminology

• Hit: data appears in some block in the upper level (example: Block X) – Hit Rate: the fraction of memory access found in the upper level– Hit Time: Time to access the upper level which consists of

RAM access time + Time to determine hit/miss

• Miss: data needs to be retrieve from a block in the lower level (Block Y)– Miss Rate = 1 - (Hit Rate)– Miss Penalty: Time to replace a block in the upper level +

Time to deliver the block the processor

• Hit Time << Miss Penalty (500 instructions on 21264!)

Lower LevelMemoryUpper Level

MemoryTo Processor

From ProcessorBlk X

Blk Y

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Cache Measures• Hit rate: fraction found in that level

– So high that usually talk about Miss rate

– Miss rate fallacy: as MIPS to CPU performance, miss rate to average memory access time in memory

• Average memory-access time = Hit time + Miss rate x Miss penalty (ns or clocks)

• Miss penalty: time to replace a block from lower level, including time to replace in CPU

– access time: time to lower level = f(latency to lower level)

– transfer time: time to transfer block =f(BW between upper & lower levels)

Cache Performance Review (1/3)• Memory Stall Cycles: the number of cycles during which the processor is

stalled waiting for a memory access. • Rewriting the CPU performance time

• The number of memory stall cycles depends on both the number of misses and the cost per miss, which is called the miss penalty:

timecycleClock cycles) stallMemory cyclesclock (CPUtimeexecution CPU

Penalty Missrate MissInstrution

accessesMemory IC

Penalty MissInstrution

MissesIC

penalty Missmisses ofNumber cycles stallMemory

† The advantage of the last form is the component can be easily measured.

Cache Performance Review (2/3)• Miss penalty depends on

– Prior memory requests or memory refresh;– Different clocks of the processor, bus, and memory;– Thus, using miss penalty be a constant is a simplification.

• Miss rate: the fraction of cache access that result in a miss (i.e., number of accesses that miss divided by number of accesses).

• Extract formula for R/W

Penalty Miss Writerate miss Writeninstructioper WritesIC Penalty Miss Readrate miss Readninstructioper ReadsICcycles stallMemory

penalty Missrate MissnInstructio

accessesMemory ICcycles stallMemory

† Simplify the complete formula by combining the R/W.

Example (1)• Assume we have a computer where the clocks per instruction (CPI) is 1.0 when all memory accesses hit in the cache. The

only data accesses are loads and stores, and these total 50% of the instructions. If the miss penalty is 25 clock cycles and the miss rate is 2%, how much faster would the computer be if all instructions were cache hits?

• Ans:First computer the performance for the computer that always hits:

Now for the computer with the real cache, first we compute memory stall cycles:

The total performance is thus

The performance ratio is the inverse of the execution times:

cycleClock 1.0ICcycleClock 0)CPI(IC timecycleClock cycles) stallMemory cyclesclock (CPUtimeexecution CPU

0.75IC250.020.5)(1IC

penalty Missrate MissInstrution

accessesMemory ICcycles stallMemory

cycleClock IC1.75 timecycleClock cycles) stallMemory cyclesclock (CPUtimeexecution CPU

75.1cycleClock IC1.0cycleClock IC1.75

timeexecution CPUtimeexecution CPU cache

Cache Performance Review (3/3)

• Usually, measuring miss rate as misses per instruction rather than misses per memory reference.

• For example, in the previous example into misses per instruction:

nInstructioaccessesMemoryrate Miss

count nInstructioaccessesMemory rate Miss

InstrutionMisses

† The latter formula is useful when you know the average number of memory accesses per instruction.

030.05.102.0nInstructio

accessesMemoryrate MissInstrution

Misses

Example (2)• To show equivalency between the two miss rate equations, let’s redo the

example above, this time assuming a miss rate per 1000 instructions of 30. What is memory stall time in terms of instruction count?

• AnswerRecomputing the memory stall cycles:

0.75IC

7501000

IC

25301000

IC

penalty Miss1000nInstructio

Misses1000

IC

penalty MissnInstructio

MissesIC

penalty Missmisses ofNumber cycles stallMemory

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4 Questions for Memory Hierarchy

• Q1: Where can a block be placed in the upper level? (Block placement)

• Q2: How is a block found if it is in the upper level? (Block identification)

• Q3: Which block should be replaced on a miss? (Block replacement)

• Q4: What happens on a write? (Write strategy)

Q1: Where Can a Block be Placed in The Upper Level? • Block Placement

– Direct Mapped, Fully Associative, Set Associative• Direct mapped: (Block number) mod (Number of blocks in cache)• Set associative: (Block number) mod (Number of sets in cache)

– # of set # of blocks– n-way: n blocks in a set– 1-way = direct mapped

• Fully associative: # of set = 1

Block-frame address

Block no. 0 1 2 3 54 76 8 129 31

Direct mapped: block 12 can go only into block 4 (12 mod 8)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7Block no.

Set associative: block 12 can go anywhere in set 0 (12 mod 4)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Set0

Block no.

Set1 Set2 Set3

Fully associative: block 12 can go anywhere

Block no. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

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Q1: Where can a block be placed in the upper level?

• Block 12 placed in 8 block cache:– Fully associative, direct mapped, 2-way set associative– S.A. Mapping = Block Number Modulo Number Sets

Cache

01234567 0123456701234567

Memory

111111111122222222223301234567890123456789012345678901

Full Mapped (Associative)

Direct Mapped(12 mod 8) = 4

2-Way Assoc(12 mod 4) = 0

1 KB Direct Mapped Cache, 32B blocks

• For a 2N byte cache– The uppermost (32 - N) bits are always the Cache Tag– The lowest M bits are the Byte Select (Block Size = 2M)

Cache Index

0123

:

Cache DataByte 0

0431

:

Cache Tag Example: 0x50Ex: 0x01

0x50

Stored as partof the cache “state”

Valid Bit

:31

Byte 1Byte 31 :

Byte 32Byte 33Byte 63 :Byte 992Byte 1023 :

Cache Tag

Byte SelectEx: 0x00

9 510

Set Associative Cache• N-way set associative: N entries for each Cache Index

– N direct mapped caches operates in parallel• Example: Two-way set associative cache

– Cache Index selects a “set” from the cache;– The two tags in the set are compared to the input in parallel;– Data is selected based on the tag result.

Cache DataCache Block 0

Cache TagValid

:: :


Cache Tag Valid

: ::

Cache Index

Mux 01Sel1 Sel0

Cache Block

CompareAdr Tag Compare

ORHit


Cache TagValid

:: :


Cache Tag Valid

: ::


Cache Tag Valid

: ::

Cache Index

Mux 01Sel1 Sel0

Cache Block

CompareAdr Tag CompareCompare

ORHit

Disadvantage of Set Associative Cache

• N-way Set Associative Cache versus Direct Mapped Cache:– N comparators vs. 1– Extra MUX delay for the data– Data comes AFTER Hit/Miss decision and set selection

• In a direct mapped cache, Cache Block is available BEFORE Hit/Miss:– Possible to assume a hit and continue. Recover later if miss.


Cache TagValid

:: :


Cache Tag Valid

: ::

Cache Index

Mux 01Sel1 Sel0

Cache Block

CompareAdr Tag Compare

ORHit


Cache TagValid

:: :


Cache Tag Valid

: ::


Cache Tag Valid

: ::

Cache Index

Mux 01Sel1 Sel0

Cache Block

CompareAdr Tag CompareCompare

ORHit

Q2: Block Identification• Tag on each block

– No need to check index or block offset• Increasing associativity shrinks index, expands

tag

BlockOffset

Block Address

IndexTag

Cache size = Associativity × 2index_size × 2offest_size

Set Select Data Select

Fully Assoc.Direct Mapped

Example

Cache Block

Set Way Mem Blocks that can reside in cache block

0 0 0 M0, M1, M2, … M311 0 1 M0, M1, M2, … M312 0 2 M0, M1, M2, … M313 0 3 M0, M1, M2, … M314 0 4 M0, M1, M2, … M315 0 5 M0, M1, M2, … M316 0 6 M0, M1, M2, … M317 0 7 M0, M1, M2, … M31

Example

Q3: Which block should be replaced on a miss?

• Easy for Direct Mapped• Set Associative or Fully Associative

– Random– LRU (Least Recently Used)– First in, first out (FIFO)

Associativity2-way 4-way 8-way

Size LRU Ran. FIFO LRU Ran. FIFO LRU Ran. FIFO16KB 114.1 117.

3115.

5111.7 115.

1113.3 109.

0111.

8110.4

64KB 103.4 104.3

103.9

102.4 102.3

103.1 99.7 100.5

100.3

256KB

92.2 92.1 92.5 92.1 92.1 92.5 92.1 92.1 92.5

Data Cache misses per 1000 instructions

Q3: After a cache read miss, if there are no empty cache blocks, which block should be removed from the cache?

A randomly chosen block?Easy to implement, how

well does it work?

The Least Recently Used (LRU) block? Appealing,but hard to implement for high associativity

Miss Rate for 2-way Set Associative CacheAlso,

tryother

LRUapprox.

Size Random LRU

16 KB 5.7% 5.2%

64 KB 2.0% 1.9%

256 KB 1.17% 1.15%

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Q4: What happens on a write?Write-Through Write-Back

Policy

Data written to cache block

also written to lower-level memory

Write data only to the cache

Update lower level when a block falls out of the

cache

Debug Easy Hard

Do read misses produce writes? No Yes

Do repeated writes make it to lower

level?Yes No

Additional option -- let writes to an un-cached address allocate a new cache line (“write-

allocate”). 32

Write Buffers for Write-Through Caches

Q. Why a write buffer ?

ProcessorCache

Write Buffer

Lower Level

Memory

Holds data awaiting write-through to lower level memory

A. So CPU doesn’t stall

Q. Why a buffer, why not just one register ?

A. Bursts of writes arecommon.Q. Are Read After

Write (RAW) hazards an issue for write buffer?

A. Yes! Drain buffer before next read, or send read 1st after check write buffers.

Write Miss Policy• Another factor distinguishing caches is its write policy. • There are two basic options when writing to the cache: write-through

and write-back. • When the information is written to both the block in the cache as well

as the block in the lower-level memory, then the cache is said to be write-through.

• If the information is written only to the block in the cache, the cache is said to be write-back. – Block stay out of the cache in no-write allocate until the program tries to read the

blocks, but with write allocate, even blocks that are only written will still be in the cache.

– The modified cache block is written to main memory only when it is replaced. To reduce the frequency of writing back blocks on replacement, “dirty bit”s are used. It indicates whether the block in cache has been modified or not. If it is clean then there is no need to write it back to the next lower level memory.

Write-Miss Policy Example• Example: Assume a fully associative write-back cache with many cache entries that starts

empty. Below is sequence of five memory operations (The address is in square brackets): Write Mem[100]; Write Mem[100]; Read Mem[200]; Write Mem[200]; Write Mem[100].What are the number of hits and misses (inclusive reads and writes) when using no-write allocate versus write allocate?

• AnswerNo-write Allocate: Write allocate:

Write Mem[100]; 1 write miss Write Mem[100]; 1 write miss Write Mem[100]; 1 write miss Write Mem[100]; 1 write hit Read Mem[200]; 1 read miss Read Mem[200]; 1 read miss Write Mem[200]; 1 write hit Write Mem[200]; 1 write hit Write Mem[100]. 1 write miss Write Mem[100]; 1 write hit 4 misses; 1 hit 2 misses; 3 hits

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5 Basic Cache Optimizations

• Reducing Miss Rate1. Larger Block size (compulsory misses)2. Larger Cache size (capacity misses)3. Higher Associativity (conflict misses)

• Reducing Miss Penalty4. Multilevel Caches

• Reducing hit time5. Giving Reads Priority over Writes

• E.g., Read complete before earlier writes in write buffer

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The Limits of Physical Addressing

CPU MemoryA0-A31 A0-A31

D0-D31 D0-D31

“Physical addresses” of memory locations

Data

All programs share one address space: The physical address space

No way to prevent a program from accessing any machine resource

Machine language programs must beaware of the machine organization

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Solution: Add a Layer of Indirection

CPU Memory

A0-A31 A0-A31

D0-D31 D0-D31

Data

User programs run in an standardizedvirtual address space

Address Translation hardware managed by the operating system (OS)

maps virtual address to physical memory

“Physical Addresses”

AddressTranslation

Virtual Physical

“Virtual Addresses”

Hardware supports “modern” OS features:Protection, Translation, Sharing 39

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Three Advantages of Virtual Memory

• Translation: – Program can be given consistent view of memory, even though physical memory is

scrambled– Makes multithreading reasonable (now used a lot!)– Only the most important part of program (“Working Set”) must be in physical memory.– Contiguous structures (like stacks) use only as much physical memory as necessary yet

still grow later.• Protection:

– Different threads (or processes) protected from each other.– Different pages can be given special behavior

• (Read Only, Invisible to user programs, etc).– Kernel data protected from User programs– Very important for protection from malicious programs

• Sharing:– Can map same physical page to multiple users

(“Shared memory”)

Page tables encode virtual address spaces

A machine usually supports

pages of a few sizes

(MIPS R4000):

A valid page table entry codes physical memory “frame” address for the page

A virtual address spaceis divided into blocks

of memory called pagesPhysical

Address SpaceVirtual

Address Space

frame

frame

frameframe

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Page tables encode virtual address spaces

A machine usually supports

pages of a few sizes

(MIPS R4000):

PhysicalMemory Space

A valid page table entry codes physical memory “frame” address for the page

A virtual address spaceis divided into blocks

of memory called pagesframe

frame

frame

frame

A page table is indexed by a virtual address

virtual address

Page Table

OS manages the page table for each ASID

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PhysicalMemory Space

• Page table maps virtual page numbers to physical frames (“PTE” = Page Table Entry)

• Virtual memory => treat memory cache for disk

Details of Page Table

Virtual Address

Page Table

indexintopagetable

Page TableBase Reg

V AccessRights PA

V page no. offset12

table locatedin physicalmemory

P page no. offset12

Physical Address

frame

frame

frame

frame

virtual address

Page Table

Page tables may not fit in memory!A table for 4KB pages for a 32-bit address

space has 1M entries Each process needs its own address space!

P1 index P2 index Page Offset31 12 11 02122

32 bit virtual address

Top-level table wired in main memory

Subset of 1024 second-level tables in main memory; rest are on disk or

unallocated

Two-level Page Tables

VM and Disk: Page replacement policy

...

Page Table

1 0useddirty

1 00 11 10 0

Set of all pagesin Memory Tail pointer:

Clear the usedbit in thepage table

Head pointerPlace pages on free list if used bitis still clear.Schedule pages with dirty bit set tobe written to disk.

Freelist

Free Pages

Dirty bit: page written.

Used bit: set to

1 on any reference

Architect’s role: support setting dirty and used

bits

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MIPS Address Translation: How does it work?

“Physical Addresses”

CPU MemoryA0-A31 A0-A31

D0-D31 D0-D31

Data

TLB also containsprotection bits for virtual address

Virtual Physical


TranslationLook-Aside

Buffer(TLB)

Translation Look-Aside Buffer (TLB)A small fully-associative cache of

mappings from virtual to physical addresses

Fast common case: Virtual address is in TLB,

process has permission to read/write it.

What is the table

ofmappings that it caches?

V=0 pages either reside

on disk or have not yet

been allocated.

OS handles V=0

“Page fault”

Physical and virtual pages

must be the same size!

The TLB caches page table entries

TLB

Page Table

2

0

13

virtual address

page off

2frame page

250

physical address

page off

TLB caches page table

entries.

MIPS handles TLB misses in software

(random replacement). Other machines use

hardware.

for ASID

Physical

frameaddres

s

Can TLB and caching be overlapped?

Index Byte Select

ValidCache Tags Cache Data

Data out

Virtual Page Number Page Offset


Buffer(TLB)

Virtual

Physical

=

Hit

Cache Tag

This works, but ...

Q. What is the downside?A. Inflexibility. Size of

cache limited by page size.

Cache Block

Cache Block

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Problems With Overlapped TLB AccessOverlapped access only works as long as the address bits used to index into the cache do not change as the result of VA translationThis usually limits things to small caches, large page sizes, or high n-way set associative caches if you want a large cacheExample: suppose everything the same except that the cache is increased to 8 K bytes instead of 4 K:

11 200

virt page # disp20 12

cache index

This bit is changedby VA translation, butis needed for cachelookup

Solutions: go to 8K byte page sizes; go to 2 way set associative cache; or SW guarantee VA[13]=PA[13]

1K4 4

10 2 way set assoc cache

Use virtual addresses for cache?“Physical

Addresses”

CPU Main Memory

A0-A31 A0-A31

D0-D31 D0-D31

Only use TLB on a cache miss !


Buffer(TLB)

Virtual Physical


A. Synonym problem. If two address spaces share a physical frame, data may

be in cache twice. Maintaining consistency is a nightmare.

CacheVirtual

D0-D31

Downside: a subtle, fatal problem. What is it?

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Summary #1/3: The Cache Design Space

• Several interacting dimensions– cache size– block size– associativity– replacement policy– write-through vs write-back– write allocation

• The optimal choice is a compromise– depends on access characteristics

• workload• use (I-cache, D-cache, TLB)

– depends on technology / cost• Simplicity often wins

Associativity

Cache Size

Block Size

Bad

GoodLess More

Factor A Factor B

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Summary #2/3: Caches

• The Principle of Locality:– Program access a relatively small portion of the address space at

any instant of time.• Temporal Locality: Locality in Time• Spatial Locality: Locality in Space

• Three Major Categories of Cache Misses:– Compulsory Misses: sad facts of life. Example: cold start misses.– Capacity Misses: increase cache size– Conflict Misses: increase cache size and/or associativity.

Nightmare Scenario: ping pong effect!• Write Policy: Write Through vs. Write Back• Today CPU time is a function of (ops, cache misses) vs. just

f(ops): affects Compilers, Data structures, and Algorithms

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Summary #3/3: TLB, Virtual Memory

• Page tables map virtual address to physical address• TLBs are important for fast translation• TLB misses are significant in processor performance

– funny times, as most systems can’t access all of 2nd level cache without TLB misses!

• Caches, TLBs, Virtual Memory all understood by examining how they deal with 4 questions: 1) Where can block be placed?2) How is block found? 3) What block is replaced on miss? 4) How are writes handled?

• Today VM allows many processes to share single memory without having to swap all processes to disk; today VM protection is more important than memory hierarchy benefits, but computers insecure

• Prepare for debate + quiz on Wednesday

appendix b. memory hierarchy

Documents

dram faster

ns dram

memory hierarchycsci

steve wozniaksteve jobs

faster cache memories

microprocessors apple

powerpoint presentations

instructor resources