System and circuit level power modeling of energy-efficient 3D-stacked wide I/O DRAMs

Abstract

JEDEC recently introduced its new standard for 3D-stacked Wide I/O DRAM memories, which defines their architecture, design, features and timing behavior. With improved performance/power trade-offs over previous generation DRAMs, Wide I/O DRAMs provide an extremely energy-efficient green memory solution required for next-generation embedded and high-performance computing systems. With both industry and academia pushing to evaluate and employ these highly anticipated memories, there is an urgent need for an accurate power model targeting Wide I/O DRAMs that enables their efficient integration and energy management in DRAM stacked SoC architectures. In this paper, we present the first system-level power model of 3D-stacked Wide I/O DRAM memories that is almost as accurate as detailed circuit-level power models of 3D-DRAMs. To verify its accuracy, we experimentally compare its power and energy estimates for different memory workloads and operations against those of a circuit-level 3D-DRAM power model and show less than 2% difference between the two sets of estimates.