Bank Swizzle Mode from The Tech ARP BIOS Guide

Bank Swizzle Mode

Common Options : Enabled, Disabled

 

Quick Review of Bank Swizzle Mode

Bank Swizzle Mode is a DRAM bank address mode that remaps the DRAM bank address to appear as physical address bits.

It does this by using the logical operation, XOR (exclusive or), to create the bank address from the physical address bits.

This effectively interleaves the memory banks and maximises memory accesses on active rows in each memory bank.

It also reduces page conflicts between a cache line fill and a cache line evict in the processor’s L2 cache.

When set to Enable, the memory controller will remap the DRAM bank addresses to appear as physical address bits. This improves performance by maximizing memory accesses on active rows and minimizes page conflicts in the processor’s L2 cache.

When set to Disable, the memory controller will not remap the DRAM bank addresses.

It is highly recommended that you enable this BIOS feature to improve memory throughput. You should only disable it if you face stability issues after enabling this feature.

 

Details of Bank Swizzle Mode

DRAM (and its various derivatives – SDRAM, DDR SDRAM, etc.) store data in cells that are organized in rows and columns.

Whenever a read command is issued to a memory bank, the appropriate row is first activated using the RAS (Row Address Strobe). Then, to read data from the target memory cell, the appropriate column is activated using the CAS (Column Address Strobe).

Multiple cells can be read from the same active row by applying the appropriate CAS signals. If data has to be read from a different row, the active row has to be deactivated before the appropriate row can be activated.

This takes time and reduces performance, so good memory controllers will try to schedule memory accesses to maximize the number of hits on active rows. One of the methods used to achieve that goal is the bank swizzle mode.

Bank Swizzle Mode is a DRAM bank address mode that remaps the DRAM bank address to appear as physical address bits. It does this by using the logical operation, XOR (exclusive or), to create the bank address from the physical address bits.

The XOR operation results in a value of true if only one of the two operands (inputs) is true. If both operands are simultaneously false or true, then it results in a value of false.

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This characteristic of XORing the physical address to create the bank address reduces page conflicts by remapping the memory bank addresses so only one of two banks can be active at any one time.

This effectively interleaves the memory banks and maximizes memory accesses on active rows in each memory bank.

It also reduces page conflicts between a cache line fill and a cache line evict in the processor’s L2 cache.

When set to Enable, the memory controller will remap the DRAM bank addresses to appear as physical address bits. This improves performance by maximizing memory accesses on active rows and minimizes page conflicts in the processor’s L2 cache.

When set to Disable, the memory controller will not remap the DRAM bank addresses.

It is highly recommended that you enable this BIOS feature to improve memory throughput. You should only disable it if you face stability issues after enabling this feature.

 

Recommended Reading

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