ARB: a hardware mechanism for dynamic reordering of memoryreferences
Franklin, M.; Sohi, G.S.
Computers, IEEE Transactions on
Volume 45, Issue 5, May 1996 Page(s):552 - 571
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/12.509907
Summary:To exploit instruction level parallelism, it is important not only
to execute multiple memory references per cycle, but also to reorder
memory references-especially to execute loads before stores that precede
them in the sequential instruction stream. To guarantee correctness of
execution in such situations, memory reference addresses have to be
disambiguated. This paper presents a novel hardware mechanism, called an
Address Resolution Buffer (ARB), for performing dynamic reordering of
memory references. The ARB supports the following features: (1) dynamic
memory disambiguation in a decentralized manner, (2) multiple memory
references per cycle, (3) out-of-order execution of memory references,
(4) unresolved loads and stores, (5) speculative loads and stores, and
(6) memory renaming. The paper presents the results of a simulation
study that we conducted to verify the efficacy of the ARB for a
superscalar processor. The paper also shows the ARB's application in a
multiscalar processor
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