RowClone: Fast and Energy-Efficient In-DRAM Bulk Data Copy and Initialization

Several system-level operations trigger bulk data copy or initial-ization. Even though these bulk data operations do not require any computation, current systems transfer a large quantity of data back and forth on the memory channel to perform such opera-tions. As a result, bulk data operations consume high latency, bandwidth, and energy—degrading both system performance and energy eXciency. In this work, we propose RowClone, a new and simple mech-anism to perform bulk copy and initialization completely within DRAM — eliminating the need to transfer any data over the mem-ory channel to perform such operations. Our key observation is that DRAM can internally and eXciently transfer a large quantity of data (multiple KBs) between a row of DRAM cells and the as-sociated row buUer. Based on this, our primary mechanism ca