Fast modeling DRAM access latency based on the LLC memory stride distribution without detailed simulations

Abstract

The last level cache (LLC) memory accessing patterns influence the DRAM performance significantly due to their determination on the DRAM Row buffer hit rates (RBH), which are highly related to the DRAM access latency. However, it is too difficult to accurately quantify these effects without the LLC memory accessing traces from detailed simulations.This paper proposes an analytical model of DRAM access latency based on the RBH analysis. By exploring the relationship between the LLC spatial localities (described with the LLC stride distribution in this paper) and different RBH cases, the unknown parameters of the model can be quantified. Instead of detailed simulations, the LLC stride distributions are deduced from the stride distributions extracted from the software trace and the LLC miss rate estimated by the multi-level cache behavior model in our prior works, which significantly decreases the time overhead of our model.Fifteen benchmarks, chosen from Mobybench 2.0, Mibench 1.0 and Mediabench II, are utilized to evaluate the model's accuracy. Compared to the results of full simulations by gem5 and DRAMSim2, the average error of our model is lower than 7%, while the prediction process can be sped up by 50 times on average.