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Rethinking cycle accurate DRAM simulation

Authors:

Rommel Sánchez Verdejo,

Petar Radojković,

Bruce JacobAuthors Info & Claims

MEMSYS '19: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Memory Systems

Pages 184 - 191

https://doi.org/10.1145/3357526.3357539

Published: 30 September 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Cycle accurate DRAM simulations have been the dominating architecture simulation model for DRAM for a long time. Although accurate, its poor simulation speed has not improved for years while a lot of other architecture simulators such as CPU and cache simulators have moved away from cycle-accurate models for better performance. In this paper, we discuss limitations of cycle-accurate DRAM models, through simulation experiments, we show that cycle-accurate DRAM simulator is becoming a dominant part of overall simulation time when paired with modern CPU simulators. We also demonstrate the inherent inflexibility of cycle-accurate models becomes the roadblock for faster simulation speed and integration with other non-cycle-accurate simulation frameworks. Finally, we discuss alternative modeling techniques for DRAM simulation and point out potential pathways to further DRAM simulation technique.

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Cited By

Adak DLee HFeinberg BVoskuilen GHughes CZhou HAwad A(2024)SEFsim: A Statistically-Guided Fast DRAM Simulator2024 IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (ISPASS)10.1109/ISPASS61541.2024.00039(304-306)Online publication date: 5-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISPASS61541.2024.00039
Foyer CGoglin BRubio Proaño A(2023)A survey of software techniques to emulate heterogeneous memory systems in high-performance computingParallel Computing10.1016/j.parco.2023.103023116:COnline publication date: 1-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.parco.2023.103023
Steiner LJung MPrado FBykov KWehn N(2022)DRAMSys4.0: An Open-Source Simulation Framework for In-depth DRAM AnalysesInternational Journal of Parallel Programming10.1007/s10766-022-00727-450:2(217-242)Online publication date: 12-Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10766-022-00727-4
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Rethinking cycle accurate DRAM simulation
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Modeling and simulation

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cover image ACM Other conferences

MEMSYS '19: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Memory Systems

September 2019

517 pages

ISBN:9781450372060

DOI:10.1145/3357526

Copyright © 2019 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 30 September 2019

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MEMSYS '19

MEMSYS '19: The International Symposium on Memory Systems

September 30 - October 3, 2019

District of Columbia, Washington, USA

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Cited By

Adak DLee HFeinberg BVoskuilen GHughes CZhou HAwad A(2024)SEFsim: A Statistically-Guided Fast DRAM Simulator2024 IEEE International Symposium on Performance Analysis of Systems and Software (ISPASS)10.1109/ISPASS61541.2024.00039(304-306)Online publication date: 5-May-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/ISPASS61541.2024.00039
Foyer CGoglin BRubio Proaño A(2023)A survey of software techniques to emulate heterogeneous memory systems in high-performance computingParallel Computing10.1016/j.parco.2023.103023116:COnline publication date: 1-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.parco.2023.103023
Steiner LJung MPrado FBykov KWehn N(2022)DRAMSys4.0: An Open-Source Simulation Framework for In-depth DRAM AnalysesInternational Journal of Parallel Programming10.1007/s10766-022-00727-450:2(217-242)Online publication date: 12-Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10766-022-00727-4
Brahmakshatriya AFurst EYing VHsu CHong CRuttenberg MZhang YJung DRichmond DTaylor MShun JOskin MSanchez DAmarasinghe SMartínez JDuato JJohn L(2021)Taming the zooProceedings of the 48th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture10.1109/ISCA52012.2021.00041(429-442)Online publication date: 14-Jun-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ISCA52012.2021.00041
Mirosanlou RGuo DHassan MPellizzoni R(2020)MCsim: An Extensible DRAM Memory Controller SimulatorIEEE Computer Architecture Letters10.1109/LCA.2020.300828819:2(105-109)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2020
https://doi.org/10.1109/LCA.2020.3008288
Steiner LJung MPrado FBykov KWehn N(2020)DRAMSys4.0: A Fast and Cycle-Accurate SystemC/TLM-Based DRAM SimulatorEmbedded Computer Systems: Architectures, Modeling, and Simulation10.1007/978-3-030-60939-9_8(110-126)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60939-9_8

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