BulkCompiler: high-performance sequential consistency through cooperative compiler and hardware support

A platform that supported Sequential Consistency (SC) for all codes — not only the well-synchronized ones — would simplify the task of programmers. Recently, several hardware architectures that support high-performance SC by committing groups of instructions at a time have been proposed. However, for a platform to support SC, it is insufficient that the hardware does; the compiler has to support SC as well. This paper presents the hardware-compiler interface, and the main compiler ideas for BulkCompiler, a simple compiler layer that works with the group-committing hardware to provide a whole-system high-performance SC platform. We introduce ISA primitives and software algorithms for BulkCompiler to drive instruction-group formation, and to transform code to exploit the groups. Our simulation results show that BulkCompiler not only enables a wholesystem SC environment, but also one that actually outperforms a conventional platform that uses the more relaxed Java Memory Model by an...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: MICRO
• Authors: Wonsun Ahn, Shanxiang Qi, M. Nicolaides, Josep Torrellas, J.-W. Lee, Xing Fang, Samuel P. Midkiff, David Wong
• Keywords: Hardware, Main Compiler Ideas, MICRO 2009, Simple Compiler Layer, Wholesystem Sc Environment