HPCA 2026
Sat 31 January - Wed 4 February 2026 Sydney, Australia
co-located with HPCA/CGO/PPoPP/CC 2026
Tue 3 Feb 2026 10:43 - 11:10 at Cronulla - Best of CAL Chair(s): Sudhanva Gurumurthi

Per-Row Activation Counting (PRAC), a DRAM read disturbance mitigation method, modifies key DRAM timing parameters, reportedly causing significant performance overheads in simulator-based studies. However, given known discrepancies between simulators and real hardware, real-machine experiments are vital for accurate PRAC performance estimation. We present the first real-machine performance analysis of PRAC. After verifying timing modifications on the latest CPUs using microbenchmarks, our analysis shows that PRAC’s average and maximum overheads are just 1.06% and 3.28% for the SPEC CPU2017 workloads—up to 9.15× lower than simulator-based reports. Further, we show that the close page policy minimizes this overhead by effectively hiding the elongated DRAM row precharge operations due to PRAC from the critical path.

Tue 3 Feb

Displayed time zone: Hobart change

09:50 - 11:10
Best of CALBest of CAL at Cronulla
Chair(s): Sudhanva Gurumurthi AMD
09:50
26m
Talk
QuArch: A Question-Answering Dataset for AI Agents in Computer Architecture
Best of CAL
Shvetank Prakash Harvard, Andrew Cheng Harvard, Jason Yik Harvard, Arya Tschand Harvard, Radhika Ghosal Harvard, Ikechukwu Uchendu Harvard, Jessica Quaye Harvard, Jeffrey Ma Harvard, Shreyas Grampurohit IIT Bombay, Sofia Giannuzzi Harvard, Arnav Balyan Independent, Fin Amin North Carolina State University, Aadya Pipersenia IIT Bombay, Yash Choudhary IIT Bombay, Ankita Nayak Qualcomm AI Research, Amir Yazdanbakhsh Google Research, Brain Team, Vijay Janapa Janapa Reddi Harvard University
Link to publication DOI
10:16
26m
Talk
The Architectural Sustainability Indicator
Best of CAL
Jaime Roelandts Ghent University, Ajeya Naithani TU Eindhoven, Lieven Eeckhout Ghent University, Belgium
Link to publication DOI
10:43
26m
Talk
Per-Row Activation Counting on Real Hardware: Demystifying Performance Overheads
Best of CAL
Jumin Kim Seoul National University, Seungmin Baek Seoul National University, Minbok Wi Seoul National University, Hwayong Nam Seoul National University, Michael Jaemin Kim Meta, Sukhan Lee Samsung Electronics, Kyomin Sohn Samsung, Jung Ho Ahn Seoul National University
Link to publication DOI