Efficiently Scaling Out-of-Order Cores for Simultaneous Multithreading

Abstract

Simultaneous multithreading (SMT) out-of-order cores waste a significant portion of structural out-of-order core resources on instructions that do not need them. These resources eliminate false ordering dependences. However, because thread interleaving spreads dependent instructions, nearly half of instructions dynamically issue in program order after all false dependences have resolved. These in-sequence instructions interleave with other reordered instructions at a fine granularity within the instruction window. We develop a technique to efficiently scale in-flight instructions through a hybrid out-of-order/in-order microarchitecture, which can dispatch instructions to efficient in-order scheduling mechanisms -- using a FIFO issue queue called the shelf -- on an instruction-by-instruction basis. Instructions dispatched to the shelf do not allocate out-of-order core resources in the reorder buffer, issue queue, physical registers, or load-store queues. We measure opportunity for such hybrid microarchitectures and design and evaluate a practical dispatch mechanism targeted at 4-threaded cores. Adding a shelf to a baseline 4-thread system with 64- entry ROB improves normalized system throughput by 11.5% (up to 19.2% at best) and energy-delay product by 10.9% (up to 17.5% at best).