MAD kernels: an experimental testbed to study multiprocessor memory system behavior

On large-scale multiprocessors, access to common memory is one of the key performance limiting factors. The shared-memory performance depends not only on the characteristics of the memory hierarchy itself, but also upon the characteristics of the memory address streams and the interaction between the two. We present a technique for multiprocessor workload construction and a family of artificial kernels, called MAD-kernels, to systematically investigate the behavior of the memory hierarchy. The measured performance is independent of any particular application or algorithm. The proposed methodology is demonstrated on two commercial shared-memory systems