A Superscalar software architecture model for Multi-Core Processors (MCPs)

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2010.04.068 Byline: Gyu Sang Choi (a), Chita R. Das (b) Keywords: Multi-Core; SuperScalar; Software architecture model; Multi-thread Abstract: Design of high-performance servers has become a research thrust to meet the increasing demand of network-based applications. One approach to design such architectures is to exploit the enormous computing power of Multi-Core Processors (MCPs) that are envisioned to become the state-of-the-art in processor architecture. In this paper, we propose a new software architecture model, called SuperScalar, suitable for MCP machines. The proposed SuperScalar model consists of multiple pipelined thread pools, where each pipelined thread pool consists of multiple threads, and each thread takes a different role. The main advantages of the proposed model are global information sharing by the threads and minimal memory requirement due to fewer threads. We have conducted in-depth performance analyses of the proposed scheme along with three prior software architecture schemes (Multi-Process (MP), Multi-Thread (MT) and Event-Driven (ED)) via an analytical model. The performance results indicate that the proposed SuperScalar model shows the best performance across all system and workload parameters compared to the MP, MT and ED models. Although the MT model shows competitive performance with less number of processing cores and smaller data cache size, the advantage of the SuperScalar model becomes obvious as the number of processing cores increases. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Yeungnam University, Sojae Building #202-1, 214-1 Dae-dong, Gyeongsan-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do 712-749, Republic of Korea (b) Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, United States Article History: Received 8 June 2009; Revised 29 April 2010; Accepted 29 April 2010 Article Note: (footnote) [star] This research was supported by the Yeungnam University research grants in 2010. Moreover, this research was supported in part by NSF grants EIA-0202007, CCR-0208734, CCF-0429631 and CNS-0509251.