Computer Engineering Commons^™

A Quantitative Analysis Of Memory Controller Page Policies, Matthew Blackmore

Dissertations and Theses

Two common goals in computing system design are increasing performance and decreasing power consumption. DRAM-based memory subsystems are a major component of both system performance and power consumption. Memory controllers employ strategies to efficiently schedule DRAM operations to reduce latency and to utilize DRAM low power modes when possible. One of the most important of these is the page policy, which determines when to close pages in DRAM. An effective DRAM memory controller page policy is important to minimizing power consumption and increasing system performance. This thesis explores the impact memory controller page policy has on performance as measured by …