Multithreading Architecture

Multithreaded architectures now appear across the entire range of computing devices, from the highest-performing general purpose devices to low-end embedded processors. Multithreading enables a processor core to more effectively utilize its computational resources, as a stall in one thread need not cause execution resources to be idle. This enables the computer architect to maximize performance within area constraints, power constraints, or energy constraints. However, the architectural options for the processor designer or architect looking to implement multithreading are quite extensive and varied, as evidenced not only by the research literature but also by the variety of commercial implementations. This book introduces the basic concepts of multithreading, describes a number of models of multithreading, and then develops the three classic models (coarse-grain, fine-grain, and simultaneous multithreading) in greater detail. It describes a wide variety of architectural and software design tradeoffs, as well as opportunities specific to multithreading architectures. Finally, it details a number of important commercial and academic hardware implementations of multithreading.