Exploration of a PIM design configuration for energy-efficient task offloading

Processing in memory (PIM) has been proposed to overcome the structural difficulties associated with conventional types of computing architecture and to realize a breakthrough for applications with high data requirements. There have been numerous attempts to utilize the PIM concept. Among them, PIM offloading takes advantage of high memory bandwidths, and various sophisticated conditions have been proposed to offload certain jobs to PIM on an instruction, task or application basis. However, schemes thus far are complicated and difficult to use. This can hinder the widespread use of PIM. Moreover, a performance improvement is not guaranteed in all cases even with these complicated schemes. This paper focuses on the energy efficiency of PIM technology. The potential-based conditions are defined to offload as many tasks as possible. This is justified in that PIM takes absolute advantage over the host in terms of power consumption. A PIM configuration favorable to the selected tasks is then devised. Simulation results show that the combination of potential-based task selection and the associated design configuration can effectively speed up the process while also reducing the energy use in most cases.