Understanding the Energy Consumption of Dynamic Random Access Memories

Energy consumption has become a major constraint on the capabilities of computer systems. In large systems the energy consumed by Dynamic Random Access Memories (DRAM) is a significant part of the total energy consumption. It is possible to calculate the energy consumption of currently available DRAMs from their datasheets, but datasheets don’t allow extrapolation to future DRAM technologies and don’t show how other changes like increasing bandwidth requirements change DRAM energy consumption. This paper first presents a flexible DRAM power model which uses a description of DRAM architecture, technology and operation to calculate power usage and verifies it against datasheet values. Then the model is used together with assumptions about the DRAM roadmap to extrapolate DRAM energy consumption to future DRAM generations. Using this model we evaluate some of the proposed DRAM power reduction schemes.