Off-Chip Memory Access Optimization: By Using Memory Delay Modeling, Memory Allocation and Slack Time Management

Computationally expensive applications involve large amount of data and need to store them in cheap and large capacity off-chip memories. Each processor in multi-core system frequently accesses the global memory which takes many cycles (latency) for the transfer of data. Latency in digital systems has become a critical parameter. An important class of digital systems includes applications such as video image processing which is extremely memory expensive. In such applications, a significant amount of delay and power is consumed during memory access especially for off-chip dynamic random access memories (DRAMs). We need accurate methods for modeling and optimizing inter-core memory operations.This book describes techniques like Memory Delay Modeling, memory allocation and slack time management for optimizing memory access latency for data intensive applications.

Sultan Daud Khan is with the Department of Computer Engineering, Umm Al-Qura University, Saudi Arabia.His research interests lies in two areas, Computer Vision and Embedded Systems Designs.He was the Key member of Multi-core Design MDM Research Center,So uth Korea from 2008-2010.Currently, he is working at CSAI Research Center, Italy.