Engineering Commons^™

Application-Specific Memory Subsystems, Joseph George Wingbermuehle

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The disparity in performance between processors and main memories has

led computer architects to incorporate large cache hierarchies in

modern computers. These cache hierarchies are designed to be

general-purpose in that they strive to provide the best possible

performance across a wide range of applications. However, such a memory

subsystem does not necessarily provide the best possible performance for

a particular application.

Although general-purpose memory subsystems are desirable when the

work-load is unknown and the memory subsystem must remain fixed,

when this is not the case a custom memory subsystem may be beneficial.

For example, in an application-specific integrated circuit …