An Energy Efficient 32-nm 20-MB Shared On-Die L3 Cache for Intel® Xeon® Processor E5 Family

An energy efficient on-die 20-way set associative L3 cache of size 20 MB for the Intel
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Xeon
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processor E5 family is presented. It is manufactured in the Intel's 32-nm second generation of high-K dielectric metal gate process with 9-copper metal layers. The L3 cache design uses 0.2119 um
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cell for the high density big array and 0.2725 um
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cell for the high performance smaller arrays. The power efficiency was achieved by employing advanced power saving schemes and effective Vccmin design techniques. The proposed L3 cache topology seamlessly supports a high density modular and energy efficient designs. The effective and rich redundancy design improves both yield and low voltage operations. The L3 cache achieves more than 20-40% energy efficiency when compared to previous generations and demonstrates wide operating ranges from 1.2 GHz at below 0.7 V to greater than 4.0 GHz at above 1.0 V.