Scheduling to Optimize Cache Utilization for Non-Volatile Main Memories

Jingtong Hu, Qingfeng Zhuge, Chun Jason Xue, Wei-Che Tseng, Shouzhen Gu, Edwin Hsing-Mean Sha

Abstract: In power and size sensitive embedded systems, non-volatile memories (NVMs) are replacing DRAM as the main memory since they have higher density, lower static power consumption, and lower costs. Unfortunately, these technologies are limited by their endurance and long write latencies. To minimize the main memory access time and extend the lifetime of the NVM, we optimally schedule tasks by an ILP formulation. We also present a heuristic, Concatenation Scheduling, to solve large problems in a reasonable amount of time. Our experimental results show that when compared with list scheduling, concatenation scheduling can reduce the total memory access time by an average of 9.99% and increase the lifetime of the NVM by 26.66%. When compared with list scheduling, ILP can reduce the total memory access time by an average of 12.39% and increase the lifetime of the NVM by 38.74%.