Can DDR ram read 128 bits that are not in sequence?
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Posted by on December 31, 2005, 9:38 am
Please log in for more thread options What if I want to read only every tenth 32bit-integer of a large array? or one 32bit-member in every 200bit-object in a large array of 200bit-objects, can i still benefit from a 128 bandwidth? thanks. bill | |||||||||||||
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Posted by John McGaw on January 1, 2006, 11:36 am
Please log in for more thread options "DDR" has nothing to do with it -- the answer lies in the memory controller and the memory configuration and how the data is stored. If the compiler is optimized properly it will keep each integer variable from breaking across the memory chunk size (in this case 128 bits). So it will place 4 of the 32-bit (4 byte) integers within one 128 bit (16 byte) memory chunk. If the compiler is not optimizing then you might find that reading any given integer might (about 1/4 of the time?) have to involve two 128-bit memory chunks. If you are dealing with object with 200 bits then there is no way that a single memory operation will be able to read or store the whole object. Don't really know how modern languages handle picking a 32-bit member from 200 but I suspect that it will again fall to the compiler's optimization strategy but until I knew, based on testing, I'd assume that two reads/writes would always be involved in dealing with that 200-bitter even if only a small portion of it was the real target of the operation. So much for my SWAG... -- John McGaw [Knoxville, TN, USA] http://johnmcgaw.com | |||||||||||||
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Posted by Paul on January 5, 2006, 8:25 pm
Please log in for more thread options lemo5@optonline.net wrote:
> What if I want to read only every tenth 32bit-integer of a large array?
> or one 32bit-member in every 200bit-object in a large array of > 200bit-objects, can i still benefit from a 128 bandwidth? > thanks. > bill You should be looking for "software optimization guide" on the Intel and AMD web sites. Perhaps a section like "Cache and Memory Optimization" for example. Different processor families may have different optimizations. Software Optimization Guide for the AMD64 Processors http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/25112.PDF AMD Athlon Processor x86 Code Optimization Guide http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/22007.pdf There may be more on the Intel site, but I didn't search further than the first hit I got. developer.intel.com is where I usually start. http://www.intel.com/design/pentium4/manuals/index_new.htm "IA-32 Intel Architecture Optimization Reference Manual" ftp://download.intel.com/design/Pentium4/manuals/24896612.pdf When writing software, you have to be really aware of how caches work. Hinting that prefetch is required (via a pragma ? I'm not a software guy), can make your data available from the cache, a number of instruction times after you deliver the hint. This can help hide reads from memory, up to the point that the stride of the data is wider than a cache line. (Right off hand, I don't know how you would optimize for more widely spaced data. Or the best way for pulling in larger chunks of data than a single cache line.) As a hardware guy, I notice that processors do things a lot more with bursted data. I don't know how frequently they do single cycle style accesses any more. There is a lot of overhead associated with doing a bus transaction, and using cached data, and pulling in data a cache line at a time is not much more expensive than just trying to surgically extract 32 bits from a single access to memory. A dual channel chipset, can have memory installed in a single channel configuration, or in a dual channel configuration. Some BIOS offer the option for two different burst sizes (say 4 and 8). One value helps you fill a cache line in single channel mode, the other helps you fill a cache line in dual channel mode. Selecting the correct value should help performance, as the burst times the width should be matched to the quanta used by the L1 and L2 caches on the processor. An architecture group or a software development group may have individuals who know how to do optimizations at the machine level. In any case, careful testing is the best teacher, if you cannot get real good details on how the hardware works. (Traslation - hardware documentation sucks these days :-)) Good luck, Paul | |||||||||||||
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> or one 32bit-member in every 200bit-object in a large array of
> 200bit-objects, can i still benefit from a 128 bandwidth?
> thanks.
> bill
>