This paper examines the effectiveness of decoupling as an optimization technique for high-performance computer architectures. Decoupled access execute architectures are described, and the concept of control decoupling is introduced and justified. A description of a highly-decoupled architecture is given, and a metric for the effectiveness of decoupling on particular programs, the Loss of Decoupling frequency is introduced. Finally, a number of real benchmark programs are examined and the applicability of decoupling them is analyzed.
Peter L. Bird, Alasdair Rawsthorne, Nigel P. Topha