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WinDRAM: Weak rows as in-DRAM cache
S. Kumar, P. Sinha,
Published in John Wiley and Sons Ltd
2022
Volume: 34
   
Issue: 28
Abstract
The primary factor responsible for increasing the refresh rate is the presence of weak rows in a DRAM. They have a shorter retention time and lose charge faster than regular rows. Recently, a technique known as in-DRAM cache was introduced in which some DRAM rows act as a separate module. The in-DRAM cache can be used for a variety of purposes in DRAM. We present WinDRAM, an in-DRAM cache comprised of all the DRAM's weak rows. The most recently accessed rows are copied into the in-DRAM cache so that when the row is accessed again, both rows (original and copy) can be activated at the same time. Such simultaneous activation reduces activation time and, as a result, DRAM access latency. Dual-row activation is the term for this concept. Because weak rows are part of the in-DRAM cache and are frequently accessed, WinDRAM does not perform a periodic refresh on them. Existing techniques based on in-DRAM cache do not design the in-DRAM cache using weak rows. WinDRAM proposes a novel idea by designing the in-DRAM cache using weak rows. Because the weak rows do not need to be refreshed, the refresh interval of the remaining rows can be increased, resulting in a refresh rate reduction of 80% to 90%. The speedup is 15% to 25% faster than standard DRAM and 12.77% faster than previous work for high memory-intensive workloads. Overall energy consumption is also reduced by 10% to 15%. © 2022 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
About the journal
JournalConcurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience
PublisherJohn Wiley and Sons Ltd
ISSN15320626