Memory-intensive benchmarks: IRAM vs. cache-based machines

The increasing gap between processor and memory performance has led to new architectural models for memory-intensive applications. In this paper, we use a set of memory-intensive benchmarks to evaluate a mixed logic and DRAM processor called VIRAM as a building block for scientific computing. For each benchmark, we explore the fundamental hardware requirements of the problem as well as alternative algorithms and data structures that can help expose fine-grained parallelism or simplify memory access patterns. Results indicate that VIRAM is significantly faster than conventional cache-based machines for problems that are truly limited by the memory system and that it has a significant power advantage across all the benchmarks.