This dissertation investigates diverse techniques to support multithreading in modern
high performance processors. The mechanisms studied expand the architecture of a high
performance superscalar processor to control efficiently the interaction between software-controlled
and hardware-controlled multithreading. Additionally, dynamic speculative
mechanisms are proposed to exploit thread-level-parallelism (TLP) and instruction-level-parallelism
(ILP) on a Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) architecture.
First, the hybrid multithreaded execution model is discussed. This model
combines software-controlled multithreading with hardware support for efficient context
switching and thread scheduling. A thread scheduling technique called set scheduling is
introduced and its impact on the overall performance is described. An analytical model
of the hybrid multithreaded execution is developed and validated by simulation. Through
stochastic simulation, we find that the application of the hybrid multithreaded execution
model results in higher processor utilization than traditional software-controlled
multithreading.
Next, in the main part of this dissertation, a new architecture is proposed: the
Dynamic Simultaneous Multithreading (DSMT) processor. In this architecture, multiple
threads are identified and created speculatively at runtime without compiler help.
Subsequently, a SMT processor core executes those threads. The performance of a
DSMT processor was evaluated with a new execution-driven simulator developed
specifically for the purpose. Our experimental results based on simulation show that
DSMT architecture has very good potential to improve SMT processor's performance
when there is only a single task available for execution. / Graduation date: 2003
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/32022 |
| Date | 12 December 2002 |
| Creators | Ortiz-Arroyo, Daniel |
| Contributors | Lee, Il-Beom |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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