An Efficient STT-RAM Last Level Cache Architecture for GPUs

Abstract

In this paper, having investigated the behavior of GPGPU applications, we present an efficient L2 cache architecture for GPUs based on STT-RAM technology. With the increase of processing cores count, larger on-chip memories are required. Due to its high density and low power characteristics, STT-RAM technology can be utilized in GPUs where numerous cores leave a limited area for on-chip memory banks. They have however two important issues, high energy and latency of write operations, that have to be addressed. Low data retention time STT-RAMs can reduce the energy and delay of write operations. However, employing STT-RAMs with low retention time in GPUs requires a thorough investigation on the behavior of GPGPU applications based on which the STT-RAM based L2 cache is architectured. The STT-RAM L2 cache architecture proposed in this paper, can improve IPC by more than 100% (16% on average) while reducing the average consumed power by 20% compared to a conventional L2 cache architecture with equal on-chip area.