The economics of large-memory computations

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Abstract

We propose, and justify, an economic theory to guide memory system design, operation, and analysis. Our theory treats memory random-access latency, and its cost per installed megabyte, as fundamentals. We introduce incentives in our economic theory, and side-constraints in our analytic model of hierarchical memory, to ensure sufficient memory bandwidth and processor speed in any “well-formed” system of a given latency and size. Our theory suggests novel techniques for performance monitoring, systems accounting, and for calculating the cost/performance of various large-memory organizations such as PoPCs (“piles of PCs”), NOWs (“networks of workstations”), SMPs (“shared memory multiprocessors”), MPPs (“massively parallel” “processors”), and vector supercomputers.

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