• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.1-17
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• 2002

In this paper, we present our experiences in using symbolic model checker(SMV) to analyze a number of properties of RACE cache coherence protocol designed by ETRI(Electronics and Communications Research Institute) and to verify that RACE protocol satisfies important requirements. To investigate this, we specified the model of the RACE protocol as the input language of SMV and specified properties as a formula in temporal logic CTL. We successfully used the symbolic model checker to analyze a number of properties of RACE protocol. We verified that abnormal state/input combinations was not occurred and every possible request of processors was executed correctly We verified that RACE protocol satisfies liveness, safety and the property that any abnormal state/input combination was never occurred. Besides, We found some ambiguities of the specification and a case of starvation that the protocol designers could not expect before. By this verification experience, we show advantages of model checking method. And, we propose a new method to generate automatically test cases which are used in simulation and testing.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Communication Sciences Conference
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• 1990.06a
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• pp.832-836
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• 1990

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.19-28
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• 2005

The multiprocessor architecture is a good method to improve the computer system performance. The CC-NUMA provides a single shared space with the physically distributed memories is used widely in the multiprocessor computer system. A CC-NUMA has the full-mapped directory for the shared memory md uses a remote cache memory for tile fast memory access. In this paper, we propose a processing node architecture for a CC-NUMA system and a cache coherency protocol on the physically distributed but logically shared system. We show an implementation result of the system which is adopted the cache coherency protocol.

• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.14 no.8
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• pp.768-772
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• 2008

Today's microprocessor normally includes several processing cores to reduce the energy consumption without losing performance. In this paper, data transfer ordering mechanism can be efficiently used for cache coherence solution in unidirectional ring interconnect. RING-DATA ORDER combines the simplicity of GREEDY-ORDER and the performance of RING-ORDER. RING-DATA ORDER can be easily applicable to multicore processor with unidirectional ring interconnect.

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
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• v.7 no.12
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• pp.3964-3975
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• 2000

There are two policies for maintaining consistency among the multiple processor caches in a multiprocessor system: Write invalidate and Write update. In the write invalidate policy, whenever a processor attempt to write its cached block, it has to invalidate all the same copies of the updated block in the system. As a results of this frequent invalidations, this policy results in high cache miss ratio. On the other hand, the write update policy renew them, instead of invalidating all the same copies. This policy has to transfer the updated contents through interconnection network, whether the updated block is ptivate or not. Therefore the network suffer from heavy transaction traffic. In this paper we present an efficient cache coherence protocol for shared memory multiprocessor system connected by slotted ring. This protocol is based on the write update policy, but the updated contents are transferred only in case of updating the shared block. Otherwise, if the updated block is private, the updated contents are not transferred. We analyze the proposed protocol and enforce simulation to compare it with previous version.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.303-304
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• 2008

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.1098-1105
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• 1999

The caches in distributed shared memory systems enhance the performance by reducing memory access latency and communication overhead, but they must solve the cache coherence problem. This paper proposes a new directory protocol to solve the cache coherence problem and to improve the system performance in distributed shared memory systems. To maintain the cache coherence of shared data, processors within a limited distance reduce the communication overhead by using a bit-vector like the full directory scheme. Processors over a limited distance store pointers in a directory pool. Since the bit-vector and the directory pool remove the unnecessary cache invalidations, the proposed scheme reduces the communication traffic and improves the system performance. The dynamic limited directory scheme reduces the communication traffic up to 66 percents compared with the limited directory scheme and the number of directory access up to 27 percents compared with the dynamic pointer allocation scheme.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.133-144
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• 2008

Clusters have become a popular alternative for building high-performance parallel computing systems. Today's high-performance system area network (SAN) protocols such as VIA and IBA significantly reduce user-to-user communication latency by implementing protocol stacks outside of operating system kernel. However, emerging parallel applications require a significant improvement in communication latency. Since the time required for transferring data between host memory and network interface (NI) make up a large portion of overall communication latency, the reduction of data transfer time is crucial for achieving low-latency communication. In this paper, Eager Data Transfer (EDT) mechanism is proposed to reduce the time for data transfers between the host and network interface. The EDT employs cache coherence interface hardware to directly transfer data between the host and NI. An EDT-based network interface was modeled and simulated on the Linux-based, complete system simulation environment, Linux/SimOS. Our simulation results show that the EDT approach significantly reduces the data transfer time compared to DMA-based approaches. The EDTbased NI attains 17% to 38% reduction in user-to-user message time compared to the cache-coherent DMA-based NIs for a range of message sizes (64 bytes${\sim}$4 Kbytes) in a SAN environment.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.26 no.11
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• pp.1305-1317
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• 1999

NUMA 구조는 원격 메모리에 대한 접근이 불가피한 구조적 특성 때문에 상호 연결망이 성능을 좌우하는 큰 변수가 된다. 기존에 대중적으로 사용되던 버스는 물리적 확장성 및 대역폭에서 대규모 시스템을 구성하는 데 한계를 보인다. 이를 대체하는 고속의 지점간 링크를 사용한 링 구조는 버스가 가지는 확장성 및 대역폭의 한계라는 단점을 개선하였으나, 많은 클러스터가 연결되는 경우에는 전송 지연시간이 증가하는 문제점을 가지고 있다. 본 논문에서는 스누핑 프로토콜이 적용된 링 구조에서 클러스터 개수 증가에 따른 지연시간 증가의 문제점을 보완하기 위해 계층적 링 구조로의 확장을 제안하고, 이 구조에 효과적인 캐쉬 일관성 프로토콜을 설계하였다. 전역 링과 지역 링을 연결하는 브리지는 캐쉬 프로토콜을 관리하며 이 프로토콜에 의해 지역 링의 부하를 줄일 수 있도록 트랜잭션을 필터링하는 역할도 담당함으로써 시스템의 성능을 향상시킨다. probability-driven 시뮬레이터를 통해 계층적 링 구조가 시스템의 성능 및 링 이용률에 미치는 영향을 알아본다. Abstract Since NUMA architecture has to access remote memory, interconnection network performance determines performance of NUMA architecture. Bus, which has been used as popular interconnection network of NUMA, has a limit to build a large-scale system because of limited physical scalability and bandwidth. Ring interconnection network, composed of high-speed point-to-point link, made up for bus's defects of scalability and bandwidth. But, it also has problem of increasing delay as the number of clusters is increased. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical expansion of snoop-based ring architecture in order to overcome ring's defects of increasing delay. And we also design an efficient cache coherence protocol adopted to this architecture. Bridge, which connects local ring and global ring, maintains cache coherence protocol and does snoop-filtering which reduces local ring and cluster bus utilization. Therefore bridge can improve performance of this system. We analyze effects of hierarchical architecture on the performance of system and utilization of point-to-point links using probability-driven simulator.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
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• v.33 no.9
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• pp.699-708
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• 2006

Bus splitting technique reduces bus energy by placing modules with frequent communications closely and using necessary bus segments in communications. But, previous bus splitting techniques can not be used in MPSoC platform, because it uses cache coherency protocol and all processors should be able to see the bus transactions. In this paper, we propose a bus splitting technique for MPSoC platform to reduce bus energy. The proposed technique divides a bus into several bus segments, some for private memory and others for shared memory. So, it minimizes the bus energy consumed in private memory accesses without producing cache coherency problem. We also propose a task allocation technique considering cache coherency protocol. It allocates tasks into processors according to the numbers of bus transactions and cache coherence protocol, and reduces the bus energy consumption during shared memory references. The experimental results from simulations say the bus splitting technique reduces maximal 83% of the bus energy consumption by private memory accesses. Also they show the task allocation technique reduces maximal 30% of bus energy consumed in shared memory references. We can expect the bus splitting technique and the task allocation technique can be used in multiprocessor platforms to reduce bus energy without interference with cache coherency protocol.