Methods for improving main memory performanceNagi

In this paper we use the trace driven simulation to study the performance of the main memory. We discuss the eeect of using interleaved memory with fast page mode or precharge mode to improve the memory performance. A method that combines both fast page mode and precharge mode is deened. This method proves to give the best memory performance for memory banks having low or high order address interleaving. The eeect of bank mapping on memory performance has been studied and the results show that the best memory performance occurs when using the fast page mode with banks that are interleaved around a page size. The precharge mode gives the best performance when the banks are interleaved around a word size. It was found that increasing the number of banks will improve the DRAM performance. The increase in memory performance is insigniicant if the number of banks is more than 4. The simulation results show that with the correct selection of the number of banks, the bank mapping and the use of the appropriate type of access mode, the performance of the memory can be considerably increased without the need for extra hardware.