Modeling and evaluation for gather/scatter operations in Vector-SIMD architectures

Abstract

Gather/scatter are state of the art vector memory access modes in Vector-SIMD architectures. However, because of the stochastic and complicated properties, the hardware design of gather/scatter operations lacks theoretical analysis and modeling. This paper proposes a model for gather/scatter operations on local vector memory for the first time. The model can not only give all the possible distributions of access locations, calculate the probability of access conflicts and predict the number of access conflicts, but also can provide the theoretical guidance for the performance optimization. This model is validated through experiments which can guide users to more specifically design and optimize the implementation of gather/scatter operations.