PIO on Current HW Outperforms DMA Over a Range of Payload Sizes In A Number of Different Applications (ETH Zurich)


A new technical paper titled "Rethinking Programmed I/O for Fast Devices, Cheap Cores, and Coherent Interconnects" was published by researchers at ETH Zurich. Abstract: "Conventional wisdom holds that an efficient interface between an OS running on a CPU and a high-bandwidth I/O device should be based on Direct Memory Access (DMA), descriptor rings, and interrupts: DMA offloads transfers fr... » read more

Turbocharging Cost-Conscious SoCs With Cache


Some design teams creating system-on-chip (SoC) devices are fortunate to work with the latest and greatest technology nodes coupled with a largely unconstrained budget for acquiring intellectual property (IP) blocks from trusted third-party vendors. However, many engineers are not so privileged. For every “spare no expense” project, there are a thousand “do the best you can with a limited... » read more