GP-SIMD, a novel hybrid general-purpose SIMD architecture, addresses the challenge of data synchronization by in-memory computing, through combining data storage and massive parallel processing. In this article, we explore a resistive implementation of the GP-SIMD architecture. In resistive GP-SIMD, a novel resistive row and column addressable 4F 2 crossbar is utilized, replacing the modified CMOS 190F 2 SRAM storage previously proposed for GP-SIMD architecture. The use of the resistive crossbar allows scaling the GP-SIMD from few millions to few hundred millions of processing units on a single silicon die. The performance, power consumption and power efficiency of a resistive GP-SIMD are compared with the CMOS version. We find that PiM architectures and, specifically, GP-SIMD benefit more than other many-core architectures from using resistive memory. A framework for in-place arithmetic operation on a single multivalued resistive cell is explored, demonstrating a potential to become a building block for next-generation PiM architectures.

This work studies the influence of temperature on performance and scalability of 3D Chip Multiprocessors (CMP) from Amdahl's law perspective. We find that 3D CMP may reach its thermal limit before reaching its maximum power. We show that a high level of parallelism may lead to high peak temperatures even in small scale 3D CMPs, thus limiting 3D CMP scalability and calling for different, in-memory computing architectures.

This study presents a computer architecture, where a last-level cache and a SIMD accelerator are replaced by an associative processor. Associative processor combines data storage and data processing, and functions as a massively parallel SIMD processor and a memory at the same time. An analytic performance model of this computer architecture is introduced. Comparative analysis supported by cycle-accurate simulation and emulation shows that this architecture may outperform a conventional computer architecture comprising a SIMD coprocessor and a shared last-level cache while consuming less power.

Sparse matrix multiplication is an important component of linear algebra computations. Implementing sparse matrix multiplication on an associative processor (AP) enables high level of parallelism, where a row of one matrix is multiplied in parallel with the entire second matrix, and where the execution time of vector dot product does not depend on the vector size. Four sparse matrix multiplication algorithms are explored in this paper, combining AP and baseline CPU processing to various levels. They are evaluated by simulation on a large set of sparse matrices. The computational complexity of sparse matrix multiplication on AP is shown to be an O(nnz) where nnz is the number of nonzero elements. The AP is found to be especially efficient in binary sparse matrix multiplication. AP outperforms conventional solutions in power efficiency.

GP-SIMD, a novel hybrid general-purpose SIMD computer architecture, resolves the issue of data synchronization by in-memory computing through combining data storage and massively parallel processing. GP-SIMD employs a two-dimensional access memory with modified SRAM storage cells and a bit-serial processing unit per each memory row. An analytic performance model of the GP-SIMD architecture is presented, comparing it to associative processor and to conventional SIMD architectures. Cycle-accurate simulation of four workloads supports the analytical comparison. Assuming a moderate die area, GP-SIMD architecture outperforms both the associative processor and conventional SIMD coprocessor architectures by almost an order of magnitude while consuming less power.