Computer Memory: Why We Should Care What Is Under The Hood

Abstract

The memory subsystems of contemporary computer architectures are increasingly complex - in fact, so much so that it becomes difficult to estimate the performance impact of many coding constructs, and some long known coding patterns are even discovered to be principally wrong. In contrast, many researchers still reason about algorithmic complexity in simple terms, where memory operations are sequential and of equal cost.

The goal of this talk is to give an overview of some memory subsystem features that violate this assumption significantly, with the ambition to motivate development of algorithms tailored to contemporary computer architectures.

Keywords

• memory
• cache
• processor
• coherency
• memory model
• cache penalty