Deliverable D3.1 – Novel memory and communication technologies

Abstract : Memory and communication are major performance and energy bottlenecks in manycore architectures. They require particular attention during system design in order to maximize the resulting energy-efficiency. This deliverable surveys a number of existing candidate emerging memory and communication technologies envisioned for the compute node architecture targeted by the CONTINUUM project. It first provides an overview of non-volatile memories by discussing in particular magnetic memories and their application in system memory hierarchy so as to improve the overall energy-efficiency. Then, it presents the main concepts related to on-chip communication interconnects, typically networks on chip (NoCs). Such infrastructures are more scalable than buses or crossbars when the considered architectures feature a high number of cores. The energy improvement studied in CONTINUUM relies on the integration of the previous innovative technologies with suitable heterogeneous manycore/multicore architectures.