TENET-v2: Applying Relation-Centric Notation to Model and Optimize Data Swizzle in the Cache of Modern NPU

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Authors: Hanyu Zhang, Fangxu Guo, Liqiang Lu, Long Wang, Yunfei Du, Zhe Wang, Jinghan Zhang, Jie Zhang, Chenli Xue, Chengpeng Wu, Ziyi Zhang, Yun Eric Liang
+2 more Size Zheng, Jianwei Yin
Cited by: 0
References: 35

Abstract

Swizzle is a data access pattern optimization technique by reorganizing the execution order of computational tasks to improve the cache locality in modern NPUs. Existing analysis and optimization techniques lack support for swizzleaware modeling on NPUs and fail to effectively capture cache behavior across diverse swizzle configurations. To this end, we propose TENET-v2, a framework for modeling and optimizing swizzle. We introduce a relation-centric notation to characterize different cache access patterns, thus exploring wider swizzle space. Then, we propose a hybrid performance model for cache analysis. The proposed performance model uses an analytical approach to quantify cache miss behavior under unsaturated cache conditions (non-saturated misses), and employs a simulation method combined with an early exiting mechanism to rapidly model cache behavior under saturated cache conditions (saturated misses). Experimental evaluations demonstrate that TENET-v2 achieves an average absolute error of 1.05 % in read hit rate compared to real-world hardware. Evaluation on a variety of DNNs shows that TENET-v2 outperforms existing tensor program optimizers by up to$\mathbf{1. 5} \times$on A100 GPUs. We also demonstrate NPU cache size optimization based on TENET-v2.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Parallel Computing and Optimization Techniques Advanced Neural Network Applications Software System Performance and Reliability

Publication details

Journal / source
IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA)
Pages
1–15
Publication date
31 January 2026
Language
EN