Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 7th Jul 2005 19:16 UTC
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RE[5]: Too little, too late
by nimble on Fri 8th Jul 2005 06:55
in reply to "RE[4]: Too little, too late"
having dedicated L2 caches has some advantages, in that it allows greater bandwidth per processor,
Depends on whether the shared caches haven't got a wider bus. Does anyone know?
It also depends on whether those buses are anywhere near fully utilised.
and easier scalability to quad core configurations.
Why? It just moves the work of integrating more cores to the other side of the cache.
It also has some disadvantages, namely more cacheline ping-ponging when both processors are working on the same data.
Plus the fact that 1 MB of cache goes unused when there's only one thread or when one of the threads doesn't need much L2 cache.




Member since:
2005-07-06
Actually, the current dual-core processors from AMD give each processor a dedicated L2, and allow them to communicate at high-speed over the on-chip SRQ (system request queue). Having dedicated L2 caches has some advantages, in that it allows greater bandwidth per processor, and easier scalability to quad core configurations. It also has some disadvantages, namely more cacheline ping-ponging when both processors are working on the same data.