CXL-DMSim: A Full-System CXL Disaggregated Memory Simulator With Comprehensive Silicon Validation

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Hauptverfasser: Wang, Yanjing, Wu, Lizhou, Hong, Wentao, Ou, Yang, Wang, Zicong, Gao, Sunfeng, Zhang, Jie, Ma, Sheng, Dong, Dezun, Qi, Xingyun, Lai, Mingche, Xiao, Nong
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Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Wang, Yanjing
Wu, Lizhou
Hong, Wentao
Ou, Yang
Wang, Zicong
Gao, Sunfeng
Zhang, Jie
Ma, Sheng
Dong, Dezun
Qi, Xingyun
Lai, Mingche
Xiao, Nong
author_facet Wang, Yanjing
Wu, Lizhou
Hong, Wentao
Ou, Yang
Wang, Zicong
Gao, Sunfeng
Zhang, Jie
Ma, Sheng
Dong, Dezun
Qi, Xingyun
Lai, Mingche
Xiao, Nong
contents Compute eXpress Link (CXL) has emerged as a key enabler of memory disaggregation for future heterogeneous computing systems to expand memory on-demand and improve resource utilization. However, CXL is still in its infancy stage and lacks commodity products on the market, thus necessitating a reliable system-level simulation tool for research and development. In this paper, we propose CXL-DMSim, an open-source full-system simulator to simulate CXL disaggregated memory systems with high fidelity at a gem5-comparable simulation speed. CXL-DMSim incorporates a flexible CXL memory expander model along with its associated device driver, and CXL protocol support with CXL.io and CXL.mem. It can operate in both app-managed mode and kernel-managed mode, with the latter using a dedicated NUMA-compatible mechanism. The simulator has been rigorously verified against a real hardware testbed with both FPGAand ASIC-based CXL memory devices, which demonstrates the qualification of CXL-DMSim in simulating the characteristics of various CXL memory devices at an average simulation error of 3.4%. The experimental results using LMbench and STREAM benchmarks suggest that the CXL-FPGA memory exhibits a ~2.88x higher latency than local DDR while the CXL-ASIC latency is ~2.18x; CXL-FPGA achieves 45-69% of local DDR memory bandwidth, whereas the number for CXLASIC is 82-83%. The study also reveals that CXL memory can significantly enhance the performance of memory-intensive applications, improved by 23x at most with limited local memory for Viper key-value database and approximately 60% in memorybandwidth-sensitive scenarios such as MERCI. Moreover, the simulator's observability and expandability are showcased with detailed case-studies, highlighting its great potential for research on future CXL-interconnected hybrid memory pool.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_02282
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CXL-DMSim: A Full-System CXL Disaggregated Memory Simulator With Comprehensive Silicon Validation
Wang, Yanjing
Wu, Lizhou
Hong, Wentao
Ou, Yang
Wang, Zicong
Gao, Sunfeng
Zhang, Jie
Ma, Sheng
Dong, Dezun
Qi, Xingyun
Lai, Mingche
Xiao, Nong
Emerging Technologies
Hardware Architecture
Compute eXpress Link (CXL) has emerged as a key enabler of memory disaggregation for future heterogeneous computing systems to expand memory on-demand and improve resource utilization. However, CXL is still in its infancy stage and lacks commodity products on the market, thus necessitating a reliable system-level simulation tool for research and development. In this paper, we propose CXL-DMSim, an open-source full-system simulator to simulate CXL disaggregated memory systems with high fidelity at a gem5-comparable simulation speed. CXL-DMSim incorporates a flexible CXL memory expander model along with its associated device driver, and CXL protocol support with CXL.io and CXL.mem. It can operate in both app-managed mode and kernel-managed mode, with the latter using a dedicated NUMA-compatible mechanism. The simulator has been rigorously verified against a real hardware testbed with both FPGAand ASIC-based CXL memory devices, which demonstrates the qualification of CXL-DMSim in simulating the characteristics of various CXL memory devices at an average simulation error of 3.4%. The experimental results using LMbench and STREAM benchmarks suggest that the CXL-FPGA memory exhibits a ~2.88x higher latency than local DDR while the CXL-ASIC latency is ~2.18x; CXL-FPGA achieves 45-69% of local DDR memory bandwidth, whereas the number for CXLASIC is 82-83%. The study also reveals that CXL memory can significantly enhance the performance of memory-intensive applications, improved by 23x at most with limited local memory for Viper key-value database and approximately 60% in memorybandwidth-sensitive scenarios such as MERCI. Moreover, the simulator's observability and expandability are showcased with detailed case-studies, highlighting its great potential for research on future CXL-interconnected hybrid memory pool.
title CXL-DMSim: A Full-System CXL Disaggregated Memory Simulator With Comprehensive Silicon Validation
topic Emerging Technologies
Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.02282