Dynamic Thread Resizing for Speculative Multithreaded Processors

There is a growing interest in the use of speculative multithreading to speed up the execution of a program. In speculative multithreading model, threads are extracted from a sequential program and are speculatively executed in parallel, without violating sequential program semantics. In order to get the best performance from this model, a highly accurate thread selection scheme is needed in order to accurately assign threads to processing elements (PEs) for parallel execution. This is done using a thread predictor that assigns threads to PEs sequentially. However, this in-order thread assignment has severe limitations. One of the limitations is when the thread predictor is unable to predict the successor of a particular thread. This may cause successor PEs to remain idle for many cycles. Another limitation has to do with control independence. When a misprediction occurs, all threads, starting from the misprediction point, get squashed, although many of them may be control independent...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: ICCD
• Authors: Mohamed M. Zahran, Manoj Franklin
• Keywords: Hardware, ICCD 2003, Successor Pes, Thread Predictor, Thread Selection Scheme