CS/ECE 7810 Assignment

This assignment requires you to run simulations with Simics and make modifications to the memory system.

On the mailing list, a link to a google doc has been sent. The google doc has all the details necessary to get your Simics workspace set up.

Consider the following problems and report your findings. Your report is due Feb 24th 2014.

1. How does performance change as you vary the high and low water marks for the write drain? What if each write operation took much longer to finish (as in a PCM device)?
2. What do you observe as you change the number of banks, ranks, and channels that are used?
3. What is the difference in performance between an open-page and close-page policy?
4. What is the difference in performance for different address mapping policies?
5. Which DRAM timing parameters have the biggest impact on system performance?
6. How much does performance degrade when you increase tRFC? How much does performance improve by using fine granularity refresh (if you assumed no additional recovery overheads)? What if you did assume recovery overheads?