Memory Behavior in Scientific vs. Commercial Applications

As the market size of multiprocessor systems for commercial applications, parallel systems, especially cache-coherent shared-memory multiprocessors that are conventionally designed for scientific applications need to be tuned in different fashion to achieve the best performance for new application area. In this paper, indepth investigation on the memory behavior which is the primary cause for performance changes were made. We chose representative benchmarks in scientific and commercial application areas. After running execution-driven simulation for bus-based cache-coherent shared-memory multiprocessors, we experienced significant differences and conclude that the systems must be carefully and differently designed to achieve the best performance when they are built for distinct applications.