Phase-Priority based Directory Coherence for Multicore Processor

TL;DR

This paper introduces PPB, a phase-priority based cache coherence protocol for multicore processors that reduces transient states and stalls, improving performance and energy efficiency.

Contribution

It proposes a novel cache coherence protocol that decouples transactions using phase messages and integrates priority-based arbitration to enhance multicore system efficiency.

Findings

Reduces unnecessary transient states and stalls by up to 24%.

Achieves a 7.4% speedup in multicore performance.

Lowers energy consumption in on-chip networks.

Abstract

As the number of cores in a single chip increases, a typical implementation of coherence protocol adds significant hardware and complexity overhead. Besides, the performance of CMP system depends on the data access latency, which is highly affected by coherence protocol and on-chip interconnect. In this paper, we propose PPB (Phase-Priority Based) cache coherence protocol, an optimization of modern directory coherence protocol. We take advantage of the observation that transient states occur in directory coherence protocol, resulting in some unnecessary transient states and stalling. PPB cache coherence protocol decouples a coherence transaction and introduces the idea of phase message. This phase is considered as the priority of the message. Additionally, we also add new priority-based arbitrators in on-chip network to support PPB cache coherence protocol. This mechanism in on-chip network can support effective cache access, which makes the on-chip network more efficient. Our analysis on an execution-driven full system simulator using SPLASH-2 benchmark shows that PPB cache coherence outperforms a MESI based directory, and the number of unnecessary transient states and stalling reduces up to 24%. Also it reported the speedup of 7.4%. Other advantages of this strategy are reduced delay of flits and significantly less energy consumption in on-chip network.