CMU-CS-01-145 Computer Science Department School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Exploring Thread-Level Speculation in Software: The Effects of Memory Access Tracking Granularity Spiros Papadimitrious, Todd C. Mowry July 2001
CMU-CS-01-145.ps
A number of approaches for coarse-grained data and control speculation have been proposed, mainly in hardware. A few software-only methods exist, but they usually rely on certain assumptions about control flow or memory access patterns. We investigate the possibility of supporting speculation in software, without making any such assumptions. The main motivation is the success of a number of software DSM systems. Our approach utilizes the virtual memory hardware to track memory operations. The goal is to provide the necessary support through a software library, instead of specialized hardware. We found that a low overhead mechanism that can track memory accesses at a small granularity is necessary, thus making the virtual memory mechanism unsuitable. In this paper we explore the various overheads and, in particular, those related to the granularity of memory access tracking. 28 pages
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