Speculative Multithreading: from Multiscalar to MSSP

Computer Sciences Department
University of Wisconsin
" Speculative Multithreading: from Multiscalar to MSSP "

By

Guri Sohi
Computer Sciences Department
University of Wisconsin

Abstract: Single-chip processors currently have microarchitectures capable of supporting multiple threads of execution (either via multithreading or via chip multiprocessing), a capability whose use is likely to continue to increase. Speculative multithreading refers to a broad class of recently proposed techniques to speculatively "parallelize' the execution of a sequential program. My research group at Wisconsin has been working on speculative multithreading techniques for over a decade. This talk will overview some of what we have learned over the years. We will start with our early work on multiscalar, continue with data-driven multithreading and speculative slices (a.k.a prefetch threads or helper threads or scout threads), and then on to our most recent work on master-slave speculative parallelization.