Non-uniform Memory Access

From Localizer Cafe


Non-uniform memory access (NUMA) is a pc memory design utilized in multiprocessing, the place the memory access time depends upon the memory location relative to the processor. Below NUMA, a processor can access its own native memory sooner than non-native memory (memory local to a different processor or memory shared between processors). NUMA is useful for workloads with excessive memory locality of reference and low lock contention, as a result of a processor might operate on a subset of memory mostly or solely within its personal cache node, reducing site visitors on the memory bus. NUMA architectures logically comply with in scaling from symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) architectures. They have been developed commercially through the nineties by Unisys, Convex Computer (later Hewlett-Packard), Honeywell Data Programs Italy (HISI) (later Groupe Bull), Silicon Graphics (later Silicon Graphics Worldwide), Sequent Pc Programs (later IBM), Data Common (later EMC, now Dell Applied sciences), Digital (later Compaq, then HP, now HPE) and ICL. Methods developed by these corporations later featured in a wide range of Unix-like operating methods, and to an extent in Home windows NT.



Symmetrical Multi Processing XPS-100 family of servers, designed by Dan Gielan of Huge Corporation for Honeywell Info Methods Italy. Modern CPUs operate considerably quicker than the principle memory they use. In the early days of computing and data processing, the CPU typically ran slower than its personal memory. The performance traces of processors and memory crossed within the 1960s with the arrival of the primary supercomputers. Since then, CPUs increasingly have discovered themselves "starved for information" and having to stall whereas waiting for knowledge to arrive from memory (e.g. for Von-Neumann architecture-based computer systems, see Von Neumann bottleneck). Many supercomputer designs of the 1980s and 1990s centered on offering high-velocity memory access versus faster processors, allowing the computers to work on massive data units at speeds different techniques could not approach. Limiting the variety of memory accesses provided the key to extracting high efficiency from a modern pc. For commodity processors, this meant putting in an ever-rising amount of high-pace cache memory and using increasingly subtle algorithms to avoid cache misses.



However the dramatic improve in measurement of the operating techniques and of the applications run on them has generally overwhelmed these cache-processing improvements. Multi-processor systems with out NUMA make the problem significantly worse. Now a system can starve several processors at the identical time, notably as a result of only one processor can entry the computer's memory at a time. NUMA attempts to address this drawback by offering separate memory for every processor, avoiding the performance hit when a number of processors attempt to address the same memory. For problems involving unfold information (common for servers and related purposes), NUMA can enhance the efficiency over a single shared memory by a factor of roughly the variety of processors (or separate memory banks). Another approach to addressing this drawback is the multi-channel memory architecture, in which a linear increase in the number of memory channels increases the memory access concurrency linearly. After all, not all information finally ends up confined to a single activity, which implies that a couple of processor may require the identical data.



To handle these circumstances, NUMA systems embrace extra hardware or software to move information between memory banks. This operation slows the processors hooked up to these banks, so the overall pace enhance attributable to NUMA closely depends on the nature of the operating duties. AMD carried out NUMA with its Opteron processor (2003), using HyperTransport. Intel introduced NUMA compatibility for its x86 and Itanium servers in late 2007 with its Nehalem and Tukwila CPUs. Almost all CPU architectures use a small quantity of very quick non-shared memory generally known as cache to exploit locality of reference in memory accesses. With NUMA, sustaining cache coherence throughout shared memory has a major overhead. Though less complicated to design and build, non-cache-coherent NUMA programs turn out to be prohibitively complicated to program in the standard von Neumann architecture programming mannequin. Usually, ccNUMA makes use of inter-processor Memory Wave communication between cache controllers to maintain a consistent memory picture when multiple cache shops the identical Memory Wave Experience location.
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