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Idle Cycle Limit

Common Options : 0T, 16T, 32T, 64T, 96T, Infinite, Auto

Quick Review

This BIOS feature sets the number of idle cycles that is allowed before the memory controller forces open pages to close and precharge. It is based on the concept of temporal locality.

According to this concept, the longer the open page is left idle, the less likely it will be accessed again before it needs to be closed and the bank precharged. Therefore, it would be better to prematurely close the page and precharge the bank so that the next page can be opened quickly when a data request comes along.

This BIOS option can be set to a variety of clock cycles from 0T to 96T. This determines the number of clock cycles open pages are allowed to idle for before they are closed and the bank precharged.

If you select Infinite, the memory controller will never precharge the open pages prematurely. The open pages will be left activated until they need to be closed for a bank precharge.

If you select Auto, the memory controller will use the manufacturer's preset default setting. Most manufacturers use a default value of 16T, which forces the memory controller to close the open pages once sixteen idle cycles have passed.

For general desktop use, it is recommended that you set this feature to 8T. It is important to keep the pages open for some time, to improve the chance of page hits. Yet, they should not be kept open too long as temporal locality dictates that the longer a page is kept idle, the less likely the next data request will require data from it.

For applications (i.e. servers) that perform a lot of random accesses, it is advisable that you select 0T as subsequent data requests would most likely be fulfilled by pages other than the ones currently open. Closing those open pages will force the bank to precharge earlier, allowing faster accesses to the other pages for the next data request. There's also the added benefit of increased data integrity due to more frequent refreshes.


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