Researchers at Illinois address this conundrum in a paper presented at the International Symposium of Computer Architecture – Stash: Have Your Scratchpad and Cache it Too. In practice, this is inefficient and scratchpads have remained an enticing but niche solution. Software must explicitly move data in and out of a different scratchpad address space and take responsibility for keeping coherent multiple copies in different address spaces. Its hardware memory structure is simple and efficient. And it is not always successful.Ī scratchpad moves the burden of managing fast accesses to software. The magic of caches is that this cleverness has been hidden almost entirely from software.īut this cleverness costs energy.
#Scratchpad funding how to#
Decades of hardware research has found clever ways to determine what data to keep in the cache, how to find it, and when to throw it out. While most readers will not face the last choice, it is important for saving time and energy in the devices we love by keeping frequently-used information close at hand.Ĭaches are the workhorse of modern computers, feeding the processor with data about 100X faster than main memory. Full disclosure: He had the pleasure of working with one of the authors of the discussed paper- Sarita Adve-on her 1993 Ph.D. Hill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The following is a special contribution to this blog by CCC Executive Council Member Mark D. PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES / COMPILERS / SOFTWARE ENGINEERING.HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION / GRAPHICS / VISUALIZATION.DATABASES / INFORMATICS / DATA SCIENCE / HPC.
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