Memory Architectures 13 Preeti Ranjan Panda Abstract In this chapter we discuss the topic of memory organization in embedded systems and Systems-on-Chips (SoCs). We start with the simplest hardware- based systems needing registers for storage and proceed to hardware/software codesigned systems with several standard structures such as Static Random- Access Memory (SRAM) and Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DRAM). In the process, we touch upon concepts such as caches and Scratchpad Memories (SPMs). In general, the emphasis is on concepts that are more generally found in SoCs and less on general-purpose computing systems, although this distinction is not very clearly defined with respect to the memory subsystem. We touch upon implementations of these ideas in modern research and commercial scenarios. In this chapter, we also point out issues arising in the context of the memory architectures that become exported as problems to be addressed by the compiler and system designer. Acronyms ALU Arithmetic-Logic Unit ARM Advanced Risc Machines CGRA Coarse Grained Reconfigurable Architecture CPU Central Processing Unit DMA Direct Memory Access DRAM Dynamic Random-Access Memory GPGPU General-Purpose computing on Graphics Processing Units GPU Graphics Processing Unit HDL Hardware Description Language PCM Phase Change Memory P.R. Panda () Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India e-mail:
[email protected] © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2017 411 S. Ha, J. Teich (eds.), Handbook of Hardware/Software Codesign, DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-7267-9_14 412 P.R. Panda SoC System-on-Chip SPM Scratchpad Memory SRAM Static Random-Access Memory STT-RAM Spin-Transfer Torque Random-Access Memory SWC Software Cache Contents 13.1 Motivating the Significance of Memory....................................