2009 Articles

Reconciling Repeatable Timing with Pipelining and Memory Hierarchy

Edwards, Stephen A.; Kim, Sungjun; Lee, Edward A.; Patel, Hiren D.; Schoeberl, Martin

This paper argues that repeatable timing is more important and more achievable than predictable timing. It describes microarchitecture approaches to pipelining and memory hierarchy that deliver repeatable timing and promise comparable or better performance compared to established techniques. Specifically, threads are interleaved in a pipeline to eliminate pipeline hazards, and a hierarchical memory architecture is outlined that hides memory latencies.