LSQ: a power efficient and scalable implementation

Abstract

The load–store queue (LSQ) of modern superscalar processors is a critical and non-scalable component responsible for keeping the order of memory operations. As new architectures become more aggressive, the number of in-flight memory instructions increases, and the LSQ must satisfy higher capacity requirements. An efficient LSQ state filtering mechanism based on Bloom filtering is proposed, which, in conjunction with a dynamic or profiling-based predictor, provides significant energy reduction (up to 55% in the LSQ and 4% in the whole processor), and only incurs a small performance loss.