CD-PIM: A High-Bandwidth and Compute-Efficient LPDDR5-Based PIM for Low-Batch LLM Acceleration on Edge-Device

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Lin, Ye, Fang, Chao, Song, Xiaoyong, Wu, Qi, Jiang, Anying, Bai, Yichuan, Du, Li
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Lin, Ye
Fang, Chao
Song, Xiaoyong
Wu, Qi
Jiang, Anying
Bai, Yichuan
Du, Li
author_facet Lin, Ye
Fang, Chao
Song, Xiaoyong
Wu, Qi
Jiang, Anying
Bai, Yichuan
Du, Li
contents Edge deployment of low-batch large language models (LLMs) faces critical memory bandwidth bottlenecks when executing memory-intensive general matrix-vector multiplications (GEMV) operations. While digital processing-in-memory (PIM) architectures promise to accelerate GEMV operations, existing PIM-equipped edge devices still suffer from three key limitations: limited bandwidth improvement, component under-utilization in mixed workloads, and low compute capacity of computing units (CUs). In this paper, we propose CD-PIM to address these challenges through three key innovations. First, we introduce a high-bandwidth compute-efficient mode (HBCEM) that enhances bandwidth by dividing each bank into four pseudo-banks through segmented global bitlines. Second, we propose a low-batch interleaving mode (LBIM) to improve component utilization by overlapping GEMV operations with GEMM operations. Third, we design a compute-efficient CU that performs enhanced GEMV operations in a pipelined manner by serially feeding weight data into the computing core. Forth, we adopt a column-wise mapping for the key-cache matrix and row-wise mapping for the value-cache matrix, which fully utilizes CU resources. Our evaluation shows that compared to a GPU-only baseline and state-of-the-art PIM designs, our CD-PIM achieves 11.42x and 4.25x speedup on average within a single batch in HBCEM mode, respectively. Moreover, for low-batch sizes, the CD-PIM achieves an average speedup of 1.12x in LBIM compared to HBCEM.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_12298
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CD-PIM: A High-Bandwidth and Compute-Efficient LPDDR5-Based PIM for Low-Batch LLM Acceleration on Edge-Device
Lin, Ye
Fang, Chao
Song, Xiaoyong
Wu, Qi
Jiang, Anying
Bai, Yichuan
Du, Li
Hardware Architecture
Edge deployment of low-batch large language models (LLMs) faces critical memory bandwidth bottlenecks when executing memory-intensive general matrix-vector multiplications (GEMV) operations. While digital processing-in-memory (PIM) architectures promise to accelerate GEMV operations, existing PIM-equipped edge devices still suffer from three key limitations: limited bandwidth improvement, component under-utilization in mixed workloads, and low compute capacity of computing units (CUs). In this paper, we propose CD-PIM to address these challenges through three key innovations. First, we introduce a high-bandwidth compute-efficient mode (HBCEM) that enhances bandwidth by dividing each bank into four pseudo-banks through segmented global bitlines. Second, we propose a low-batch interleaving mode (LBIM) to improve component utilization by overlapping GEMV operations with GEMM operations. Third, we design a compute-efficient CU that performs enhanced GEMV operations in a pipelined manner by serially feeding weight data into the computing core. Forth, we adopt a column-wise mapping for the key-cache matrix and row-wise mapping for the value-cache matrix, which fully utilizes CU resources. Our evaluation shows that compared to a GPU-only baseline and state-of-the-art PIM designs, our CD-PIM achieves 11.42x and 4.25x speedup on average within a single batch in HBCEM mode, respectively. Moreover, for low-batch sizes, the CD-PIM achieves an average speedup of 1.12x in LBIM compared to HBCEM.
title CD-PIM: A High-Bandwidth and Compute-Efficient LPDDR5-Based PIM for Low-Batch LLM Acceleration on Edge-Device
topic Hardware Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.12298