A Synchronization-Based Alternative to Directory Protocol

The efficient support of cache coherence is extremely important to design and implement many-core processors. In this paper, we propose a synchronization-based coherence (SBC) protocol to efficiently support cache coherence for shared memory many-core architectures. The unique feature of our scheme is that it doesn’t use directory at all. Inspired by scope consistency memory model, our protocol maintains coherence at synchronization point. Within critical section, processor cores record write-sets (which lines have been written in critical section) with bloom-filter function. When the core releases the lock, the write-set is transferred to a synchronization manager. When another core acquires the same lock, it gets the write-set from the synchronization manager and invalidates stale data in its local cache. Experimental results show that the SBC outperforms by averages of 5% in execution time across a suite of scientific applications. At the mean time, the SBC is more cost-effective comparing to directory-based protocol that requires large amount of hardware resource and huge design verification effort.