Designing High Bandwidth On-Chip Caches

In this paper we evaluate the performance of high bandwidth caches that employ multiple ports, multiple cycle hit times, on-chip DRAM, and a line buffer to find the organization that provides the best processor performance. Processor performance is measured in execution time using a dynamic superscalar processor running realistic benchmarks that include operating system references. The results show that a large dual-ported multi-cycle pipelined SRAM cache with a line buffer maximizes processor performance. A large pipelined cache provides both a low miss rate and a high CPU clock frequency. Dual-porting the cache and the use of a line buffer provide the bandwidth needed by a dynamic superscalar processor. In addition, the line buffer makes the pipelined dual-ported cache the best option by increasing cache port bandwidth and hiding cache latency.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1997
• Where: ISCA
• Authors: Kenneth M. Wilson, Kunle Olukotun
• Keywords: Cache, Hardware, ISCA 1997, Line Buffer, Processor Performance