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Limits on the performance benefits of multithreading and prefetching

Authors:

Ricardo BianchiniAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review, Volume 24, Issue 1

Pages 37 - 46

https://doi.org/10.1145/233008.233021

Published: 15 May 1996 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents new analytical models of the performance benefits of multithreading and prefetching, and experimental measurements of parallel applications on the MIT Alewife multiprocessor. For the first time, both techniques are evaluated on a real machine as opposed to simulations. The models determine the region in the parameter space where the techniques are most effective, while the measurements determine the region where the applications lie. We find that these regions do not always overlap significantly.The multithreading model shows that only 2-4 contexts are necessary to maximize this technique's potential benefit in current multiprocessors. Multithreading improves execution time by less than 10% for most of the applications that we examined. The model also shows that multithreading can significantly improve the performance of the same applications in multiprocessors with longer latencies. Reducing context-switch overhead is not crucial.The software prefetching model shows that allowing 4 outstanding prefetches is sufficient to achieve most of this technique's potential benefit on current multiprocessors. Prefetching improves performance over a wide range of parameters, and improves execution time by as much as 20-50% even on current multiprocessors. The two models show that prefetching has a significant advantage over multithreading for machines with low memory latencies and/or applications with high cache miss rates because a prefetch instruction consumes less time than a context-switch.

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Cited By

Wang TBlagojevic FNikolopoulos DCox ASubhlok J(2004)Runtime support for integrating precomputation and thread-level parallelism on simultaneous multithreaded processorsProceedings of the 7th workshop on Workshop on languages, compilers, and run-time support for scalable systems10.1145/1066650.1066667(1-12)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2004
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1066650.1066667
Fechner BKeller JSobe P(2004)Performance estimation of virtual duplex systems on simultaneous multithreaded processors18th International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, 2004. Proceedings.10.1109/IPDPS.2004.1303241(210-217)Online publication date: 2004
https://doi.org/10.1109/IPDPS.2004.1303241
Perkovic DKeleher PPapatheodorou TValero MPolychronopoulos CMuraoka YLabarta J(1999)Responsiveness without interruptsProceedings of the 13th international conference on Supercomputing10.1145/305138.305172(101-108)Online publication date: 20-Jun-1999
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/305138.305172
Show More Cited By

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review

ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review Volume 24, Issue 1

May 1996

273 pages

ISSN:0163-5999

DOI:10.1145/233008

Editors:
Blaine E. Gaither
Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO
,
Daniel A. Reed
Univ. of Illinois, Urbana

Issue’s Table of Contents

SIGMETRICS '96: Proceedings of the 1996 ACM SIGMETRICS international conference on Measurement and modeling of computer systems
May 1996
279 pages
ISBN:0897917936
DOI:10.1145/233013
Chairman:
Daniel A. Reed
Univ. of Illinois, Urbana
,
Editor:
Blaine D. Gaither
Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO

Copyright © 1996 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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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 15 May 1996

Published in SIGMETRICS Volume 24, Issue 1

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Cited By

Wang TBlagojevic FNikolopoulos DCox ASubhlok J(2004)Runtime support for integrating precomputation and thread-level parallelism on simultaneous multithreaded processorsProceedings of the 7th workshop on Workshop on languages, compilers, and run-time support for scalable systems10.1145/1066650.1066667(1-12)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2004
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1066650.1066667
Fechner BKeller JSobe P(2004)Performance estimation of virtual duplex systems on simultaneous multithreaded processors18th International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, 2004. Proceedings.10.1109/IPDPS.2004.1303241(210-217)Online publication date: 2004
https://doi.org/10.1109/IPDPS.2004.1303241
Perkovic DKeleher PPapatheodorou TValero MPolychronopoulos CMuraoka YLabarta J(1999)Responsiveness without interruptsProceedings of the 13th international conference on Supercomputing10.1145/305138.305172(101-108)Online publication date: 20-Jun-1999
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/305138.305172
Thitikamol KKeleher P(1997)Multi-threading and remote latency in software DSMsProceedings of 17th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems10.1109/ICDCS.1997.598057(296-304)Online publication date: 1997
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICDCS.1997.598057

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