Fairness via source throttling: a configurable and high-performance fairness substrate for multi-core memory systems

Cores in a chip-multiprocessor (CMP) system share multiple hardware resources in the memory subsystem. If resource sharing is unfair, some applications can be delayed significantly while others are unfairly prioritized. Previous research proposed separate fairness mechanisms in each individual resource. Such resource-based fairness mechanisms implemented independently in each resource can make contradictory decisions, leading to low fairness and loss of performance. Therefore, a coordinated mechanism that provides fairness in the entire shared memory system is desirable. This paper proposes a new approach that provides fairness in the entire shared memory system, thereby eliminating the need for and complexity of developing fairness mechanisms for each individual resource. Our technique, Fairness via Source Throttling (FST), estimates the unfairness in the entire shared memory system. If the estimated unfairness is above a threshold set by system software, FST throttles down cores cau...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: ASPLOS
• Authors: Eiman Ebrahimi, Chang Joo Lee, Onur Mutlu, Yale N. Patt
• Keywords: ASPLOS 2010, Entire Shared Memory, Fairness Mechanisms, Memory System, Programming Languages