Precise Multi-level Inclusive Cache Analysis for WCET Estimation

Abstract—Multi-level inclusive caches are often used in multicore processors to simplify the design of cache coherence protocol. However, the use of such cache hierarchies poses great challenges to tight worst-case execution time (WCET) estimation due to the possible invalidation behavior. Traditionally, multi-level inclusive caches are analyzed in a level-by-level manner, and at each level three analyses (i.e. must, may, and persistence) are performed separately. At a particular level, conservative decisions need to be made when the behaviors of other levels are not available, which hurts analysis precision. In this paper, we propose an approach which analyzes a multi-level inclusive cache by integrating the three analyses for all levels together. The approach on the abstract interpretation of a concrete operational semantics defined for multi-level inclusive caches. We evaluate the proposed approach and also compare it with two state-of-theart approaches. From the experimental res...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2015
• Where: RTSS
• Authors: Zhenkai Zhang, Xenofon D. Koutsoukos
• Keywords: Control Systems, RTSS 2015