HotReRAM: A Performance-Power-Thermal Simulation Framework for ReRAM based Caches

Chakraborty, Shounak; Bunnam, Thanasin; Arunruerk, Jedsada; Agarwal, Sukarn; Yu, Shengqi; Shafik, Rishad; Sjalander, Magnus

Abstract

This paper proposes a comprehensive thermal modeling and simulation framework, HotReRAM, for resistive RAM (ReRAM)-based caches that is verified against a memristor circuit-level model. The simulation is driven by power traces based on cache accesses for detailed temperature modeling over time. HotReRAM models power at a fine-grain level and generates temperature traces for different cache regions together with detailed analyses of thermal stability, retention time and write latency. Combining HotReRAM with gem5, a full-system simulator, and NVSim, a power simulator, for ReRAM enables temporal and spatial modeling of crucial ReRAM characteristics. This integration allows designers and architects to analyze various cache characteristics within a single cache bank and address thermal-induced issues when designing ReRAM caches. Our simulation results for an 8MiB ReRAM cache show that the spatial thermal variance can be as high as 7K for a single cache bank, whereas the temporal thermal variance is more than 40K. Such temperature variances impact retention time with a standard deviation of 3.9 to 10.2 for a set of benchmark applications, where the write latency can increase by up to 14.5%.

Citation

Chakraborty, S., Bunnam, T., Arunruerk, J., Agarwal, S., Yu, S., Shafik, R., & Sjalander, M. (online). HotReRAM: A Performance-Power-Thermal Simulation Framework for ReRAM based Caches. IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, https://doi.org/10.1109/TCAD.2025.3546855

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 25, 2025
• Online Publication Date: Feb 27, 2025
• Deposit Date: Mar 2, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 27, 2025
• Journal: IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems
• Print ISSN: 0278-0070
• Electronic ISSN: 1937-4151
• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TCAD.2025.3546855
• Keywords: Integrated circuit modeling, Thermal stability, Computational modeling, Temperature distribution, Thermal analysis, Accuracy, Memristors, Thermal resistance, Power demand, Performance evaluation
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3547987