Energy Efficiency Impact of Processing in Memory: A Comprehensive Review of Workloads on the UPMEM Architecture

Processing-in-Memory (PIM) architectures have emerged as a promising solution for data-intensive applications, providing significant speedup by processing data directly within the memory. However, the impact of PIM on energy efficiency is not well characterized. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of workloads ported to the first PIM product available on the market, namely the UPMEM architecture, and quantify the impact on each workload in terms of energy efficiency. Less than the half of the reviewed papers provide insights on the impact of PIM on energy efficiency, and the evaluation methods differ from one paper to the other. To provide a comprehensive overview, we propose a methodology for estimating energy consumption and efficiency for both the PIM and baseline systems at data center level, enabling a direct comparison of the two systems. Our results show that PIM can provide significant energy savings for data intensive workloads. We also identify key factors that impact the energy efficiency of UPMEM PIM, including the workload characteristics. Overall, this paper provides valuable insights for researchers and practitioners looking to optimize energy efficiency in data-intensive applications using UPMEM PIM architecture.