March 2009
Intermediate to advanced
576 pages
17h 24m
English
Memory matters. As Bruce Jacob points out, the increasing gap between processor and memory speeds has made memory organization and architecture a critical part of portable design. In fact, to Jacob, it’s the most important part of the design. With tongue only slightly in cheek, he claims “little else matters right now, so stop wasting time and resources on other facets of the design.”He has a point. Changes to the memory hierarchy can indeed, as he claims, often improve execution time by 2–10×, in contrast to changes to processor parameters, which are more likely to make a difference of 2–10%. They can also have a similar impact on the energy profile of portable designs, which are ultimately the ...