Reusing remote registers in processing in memory

Abstract

Systems, apparatuses, and methods for reusing remote registers in processing in memory (PIM) are disclosed. A system includes at least a host processor, a memory controller, and a PIM device. When the memory controller receives, from the host processor, an operation targeting the PIM device, the memory controller determines whether an optimization can be applied to the operation. The memory controller converts the operation into N PIM commands if the optimization is not applicable. Otherwise, the memory controller converts the operation into a N−1 PIM commands if the optimization is applicable. For example, if the operation involves reusing a constant value, a copy command can be omitted, resulting in memory bandwidth reduction and power consumption savings. In one scenario, the memory controller includes a constant-value cache, and the memory controller performs a lookup of the constant-value cache to determine if the optimization is applicable for a given operation.