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Equation 17 · Part 11 · Locality Is the Whole Game: The Memory Hierarchy and What a Kernel Does Not Read

superscript

Q(b)  ≈  2N3b+N2,subject to3b2≤M.Q(b) \;\approx\; \frac{2N^3}{b} + N^2, \qquad \text{subject to} \quad 3b^2 \le M .
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What this part means

A raised number can be a power. When it is a label or bound, it selects a case or the upper limit of a sum; the formula’s structure distinguishes these uses.

Its job in the formula

A raised mark can be a power or an index. Its position and the surrounding notation determine which.

The passage around this formula

The repair is to restructure the loops so that the working set of the innermost computation is small enough to sit in a fast store and is used many times before being evicted. Partition the operands into b ×\times b blocks and compute block by block. Three such blocks — two inputs and an accumulator — must be resident simultaneously, so the tile size is bounded by the fast-store capacity M in words: Q(b)  ≈  2N3b+N2,subject to3b2≤MQ(b) \;\approx\; \frac{2N^3}{b} + N^2, \qquad \text{subject to} \quad 3b^2 \le M . Taking b as large as the constraint allows gives

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Learn the underlying idea

An exponent tells how a base is used in multiplication. In x³, x is the base and 3 is the exponent: x³ = x × x × x.

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