Transparent Threads: Resource Sharing in SMT Processors for High Single-Thread Performance

Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) processors achieve high processor throughput at the expense of single-thread performance. This paper investigates resource allocation policies for SMT processors that preserve, as much as possible, the single-thread performance of designated “foreground” threads, while still permitting other “background” threads to share resources. Since background threads on such an SMT machine have a near-zero performance impact on foreground threads, we refer to the background threads as transparent threads. Transparent threads are ideal for performing low-priority or non-critical computations, with applications in process scheduling, subordinate multithreading, and online performance monitoring. To realize transparent threads, we propose three mechanisms for maintaining the transparency of background threads: slot prioritization, background thread instruction-window partitioning, and background thread flushing. In addition, we propose three mechanisms to ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2002
• Where: IEEEPACT
• Authors: Gautham K. Dorai, Donald Yeung
• Keywords: Background Threads, Distributed And Parallel Computing, Foreground Thread, IEEEPACT 2002, Transparent Threads