Phase Change Technology and the Future of Main Memory

Benjamin C. Lee, Ping Zhou, Jun Yang, Youtao Zhang, Bo Zhao, Engin Ipek, Onur Mutlu, and Doug Burger

Abstract:  Phase-change memory may enable continued scaling of main memories, but PCM has higher access latencies, incurs higher power costs, and wears out more quickly than DRAM. This article discusses how to mitigate these limitations through buffer sizing, row caching, write reduction, and wear leveling, to make PCM a viable DRAM alternative for scalable main memories.

 
Accelerating Critical Section Execution with Asymmetric Multicore Architectures

M. Aater Suleman, Onur Mutlu, Moinuddin K. Qureshi, and Yale N. Patt

Abstract:  Contention for critical sections can reduce performance and scalability by causing thread serialization. The proposed accelerated critical sections mechanism reduces this limitation. ACS executes critical sections on the high-performance core of an asymmetric chip multiprocessor (ACMP), which can execute them faster than the smaller cores can.