Monday, October 8, 2012

Performance improvement of multi-core processors


Fig 1 and fig 2 shows architecture of processor “i7 and core to quad processor” respectively. By comparing i7 processor with previous processors we can conclude that cores in old processors shares there cache memory. This causes result in un efficient utilization of resources (cache), because when one core accessing cache memory then no other processor can access cache. He must have to wait until it is released by core. 


Fig 1.architecture of i7 processor

Fig 2.archtiecture of core to quad processor
 In i7 processor there is an independent local L2 cache memory for each core. These cache accessed by only their cores, not by others. Also there is one shared L3 cache memory of size 8mb which is shared among all four cores of i7 processor. I just think that shared memory is critical section area that means shared memory can be used by only one core at a time, these results in decreasing system performance.
Now I have an idea to overcome this is dividing shared cache in 4 same size caches as shown in fig 3. This result in when one core accessing an shared memory then other can access other shared memory thus one core does not have to wait for other core to release shared cache.
 fig3. Performance improvement of multi-core processors
 Above solution may causes deadlock. So we have to force them to use only one shared memory at a time so we can avoid deadlocks. But this approach will may result in program does not fit in that much of size.  


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