Skewed caches from a low-power perspective

The common approach to reduce cache conflicts is to increase the associativity. From a dynamic power perspective this associativity comes at a high cost. In this paper we present miss ratio performance and a dynamic power comparison for set-associative caches, a skewed cache and also for a new organization proposed, the elbow cache. The elbow cache extends the skewed cache organization with a relocation strategy for conflicting blocks. We show that these skewed designs significantly reduce the conflict problems while consuming up to 56% less dynamic power than a comparably performing 8-way set associative cache. We believe this to be the strongest case in favor of skewed caches presented so far. Categories and Subject Descriptions: B.3.m [Memory Structures]: Miscellaneous General Terms: Performance

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: CF
• Authors: Mathias Spjuth, Martin Karlsson, Erik Hagersten
• Keywords: Applied Computing, CF 2005, Dynamic Power, Elbow Cache, Skewed Caches