Bulk Multicore Architecture for Improved Programmability

摘要

In this article, we describe a novel, general-purpose multicore architecture-the Bulk Multicore-we designed to enable a highly programmable environment. In it, the programmer and runtime system are relieved of having to manage the sharing of data thanks to novel support for scalable hardware cache coherence. Moreover, to help minimize the chance of parallel-programming errors, the Bulk Multicore provides to the software high-performance sequential memory consistency and also introduces several novel hardware primitives. These primitives can be used to build a sophisticated program-development-and- debugging environment, including low-overhead data-race detection, deterministic replay of parallel programs, and high-speed disambiguation of sets of addresses.