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False Sharing
In computer science, false sharing is a performance-degrading usage pattern that can arise in systems with distributed, coherent caches at the size of the smallest resource block managed by the caching mechanism. When a system participant attempts to periodically access data that is not being altered by another party, but that data shares a cache block with data that ''is'' being altered, the caching protocol may force the first participant to reload the whole cache block despite a lack of logical necessity. The caching system is unaware of activity within this block and forces the first participant to bear the caching system overhead required by true shared access of a resource. Multiprocessor CPU caches By far the most common usage of this term is in modern multiprocessor CPU caches, where memory is cached in lines of some small power of two word size (e.g., 64 aligned, contiguous bytes). If two processors operate on independent data in the same memory address region storable i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Science
Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, applied disciplines (including the design and implementation of Computer architecture, hardware and Software engineering, software). Algorithms and data structures are central to computer science. The theory of computation concerns abstract models of computation and general classes of computational problem, problems that can be solved using them. The fields of cryptography and computer security involve studying the means for secure communication and preventing security vulnerabilities. Computer graphics (computer science), Computer graphics and computational geometry address the generation of images. Programming language theory considers different ways to describe computational processes, and database theory concerns the management of re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cache Coherence
In computer architecture, cache coherence is the uniformity of shared resource data that is stored in multiple local caches. In a cache coherent system, if multiple clients have a cached copy of the same region of a shared memory resource, all copies are the same. Without cache coherence, a change made to the region by one client may not be seen by others, and errors can result when the data used by different clients is mismatched. A cache coherence protocol is used to maintain cache coherency. The two main types are snooping and directory-based protocols. Cache coherence is of particular relevance in multiprocessing systems, where each CPU may have its own local cache of a shared memory resource. Overview In a shared memory multiprocessor system with a separate cache memory for each processor, it is possible to have many copies of shared data: one copy in the main memory and one in the local cache of each processor that requested it. When one of the copies of data is c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Multiprocessor
Multiprocessing (MP) is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. There are many variations on this basic theme, and the definition of multiprocessing can vary with context, mostly as a function of how CPUs are defined ( multiple cores on one die, multiple dies in one package, multiple packages in one system unit, etc.). A multiprocessor is a computer system having two or more processing units (multiple processors) each sharing main memory and peripherals, in order to simultaneously process programs. A 2009 textbook defined multiprocessor system similarly, but noted that the processors may share "some or all of the system’s memory and I/O facilities"; it also gave tightly coupled system as a synonymous term. At the operating system level, ''multiprocessing'' is sometimes used to refer to the executio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
CPU Cache
A CPU cache is a hardware cache used by the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer to reduce the average cost (time or energy) to access data from the main memory. A cache is a smaller, faster memory, located closer to a processor core, which stores copies of the data from frequently used main memory locations. Most CPUs have a hierarchy of multiple cache levels (L1, L2, often L3, and rarely even L4), with different instruction-specific and data-specific caches at level 1. The cache memory is typically implemented with static random-access memory (SRAM), in modern CPUs by far the largest part of them by chip area, but SRAM is not always used for all levels (of I- or D-cache), or even any level, sometimes some latter or all levels are implemented with eDRAM. Other types of caches exist (that are not counted towards the "cache size" of the most important caches mentioned above), such as the translation lookaside buffer (TLB) which is part of the memory management unit (M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Random Access Memory
Random-access memory (RAM; ) is a form of electronic computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working data and machine code. A random-access memory device allows data items to be read or written in almost the same amount of time irrespective of the physical location of data inside the memory, in contrast with other direct-access data storage media (such as hard disks and magnetic tape), where the time required to read and write data items varies significantly depending on their physical locations on the recording medium, due to mechanical limitations such as media rotation speeds and arm movement. In today's technology, random-access memory takes the form of integrated circuit (IC) chips with MOS (metal–oxide–semiconductor) memory cells. RAM is normally associated with volatile types of memory where stored information is lost if power is removed. The two main types of volatile random-access semiconductor memory are static ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cache Line
A CPU cache is a hardware cache used by the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer to reduce the average cost (time or energy) to access data from the main memory. A cache is a smaller, faster memory, located closer to a processor core, which stores copies of the data from frequently used main memory locations. Most CPUs have a hierarchy of multiple cache levels (L1, L2, often L3, and rarely even L4), with different instruction-specific and data-specific caches at level 1. The cache memory is typically implemented with static random-access memory (SRAM), in modern CPUs by far the largest part of them by chip area, but SRAM is not always used for all levels (of I- or D-cache), or even any level, sometimes some latter or all levels are implemented with eDRAM. Other types of caches exist (that are not counted towards the "cache size" of the most important caches mentioned above), such as the translation lookaside buffer (TLB) which is part of the memory management unit (MMU) wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Power Of Two
A power of two is a number of the form where is an integer, that is, the result of exponentiation with number 2, two as the Base (exponentiation), base and integer as the exponent. In the fast-growing hierarchy, is exactly equal to f_1^n(1). In the Hardy hierarchy, is exactly equal to H_(1). Powers of two with Sign (mathematics)#Terminology for signs, non-negative exponents are integers: , , and is two multiplication, multiplied by itself times. The first ten powers of 2 for non-negative values of are: :1, 2, 4, 8, 16 (number), 16, 32 (number), 32, 64 (number), 64, 128 (number), 128, 256 (number), 256, 512 (number), 512, ... By comparison, powers of two with negative exponents are fractions: for positive integer , is one half multiplied by itself times. Thus the first few negative powers of 2 are , , , , etc. Sometimes these are called ''inverse powers of two'' because each is the multiplicative inverse of a positive power of two. Base of the binary numeral sy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Word (data Type)
In computing, a word is any processor design's natural unit of data. A word is a fixed-sized datum handled as a unit by the instruction set or the hardware of the processor. The number of bits or digits in a word (the ''word size'', ''word width'', or ''word length'') is an important characteristic of any specific processor design or computer architecture. The size of a word is reflected in many aspects of a computer's structure and operation; the majority of the registers in a processor are usually word-sized and the largest datum that can be transferred to and from the working memory in a single operation is a word in many (not all) architectures. The largest possible address size, used to designate a location in memory, is typically a hardware word (here, "hardware word" means the full-sized natural word of the processor, as opposed to any other definition used). Documentation for older computers with fixed word size commonly states memory sizes in words rather than by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Data Structure Alignment
Data structure alignment is the way data is arranged and accessed in computer memory. It consists of three separate but related issues: data alignment, data structure padding, and packing. The CPU in modern computer hardware performs reads and writes to memory most efficiently when the data is ''naturally aligned'', which generally means that the data's memory address is a multiple of the data size. For instance, in a 32-bit architecture, the data may be aligned if the data is stored in four consecutive bytes and the first byte lies on a 4-byte boundary. ''Data alignment'' is the aligning of elements according to their natural alignment. To ensure natural alignment, it may be necessary to insert some ''padding'' between structure elements or after the last element of a structure. For example, on a 32-bit machine, a data structure containing a 16-bit value followed by a 32-bit value could have 16 bits of ''padding'' between the 16-bit value and the 32-bit value to align the 3 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit of memory in many computer architectures. To disambiguate arbitrarily sized bytes from the common 8-bit definition, network protocol documents such as the Internet Protocol () refer to an 8-bit byte as an octet. Those bits in an octet are usually counted with numbering from 0 to 7 or 7 to 0 depending on the bit endianness. The size of the byte has historically been hardware-dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size. Sizes from 1 to 48 bits have been used. The six-bit character code was an often-used implementation in early encoding systems, and computers using six-bit and nine-bit bytes were common in the 1960s. These systems often had memory words of 12, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48, or 60 bits, corresponding t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Memory Address
In computing, a memory address is a reference to a specific memory location in memory used by both software and hardware. These addresses are fixed-length sequences of digits, typically displayed and handled as unsigned integers. This numerical representation is based on the features of CPU (such as the instruction pointer and incremental address registers). Programming language constructs often treat the memory like an array. Types Physical addresses A digital computer's main memory consists of many memory locations, each identified by a unique physical address (a specific code). The CPU or other devices can use these codes to access the corresponding memory locations. Generally, only system software (such as the BIOS, operating systems, and specialized utility programs like memory testers) directly addresses physical memory using machine code instructions or processor registers. These instructions tell the CPU to interact with a hardware component called the memory c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bus (computing)
In computer architecture, a bus (historically also called a data highway or databus) is a communication system that transfers Data (computing), data between components inside a computer or between computers. It encompasses both Computer hardware, hardware (e.g., wires, optical fiber) and software, including communication protocols. At its core, a bus is a shared physical pathway, typically composed of wires, traces on a circuit board, or busbars, that allows multiple devices to communicate. To prevent conflicts and ensure orderly data exchange, buses rely on a communication protocol to manage which device can transmit data at a given time. Buses are categorized based on their role, such as system buses (also known as internal buses, internal data buses, or memory buses) connecting the Central processing unit, CPU and Computer memory, memory. Expansion buses, also called peripheral buses, extend the system to connect additional devices, including peripherals. Examples of widely ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
