PIM-enabled instructions: A low-overhead, locality-aware processing-in-memory architecture

Processing-in-memory (PIM) is rapidly rising as a viable solution for the memory wall crisis, rebounding from its unsuccessful attempts in 1990s due to practicality concerns, which are alleviated with recent advances in 3D stacking technologies. However, it is still challenging to integrate the PIM architectures with existing systems in a seamless manner due to two common characteristics: unconventional programming models for in-memory computation units and lack of ability to utilize large on-chip caches.