Cache Replacement Policies for Multicore Processors

Almost all of the modern computers use multiple cores, and the number of cores is expected to increase as hardware prices go down, and Moore's law fails to hold. Most of the theoretical algorithmic work so far has focused on the setting where multiple cores are performing the same task. Indeed, one is tempted to assume that when the cores are independent then the current design performs well. This work infirms this assumption by showing that even when the cores run completely independent tasks, there exist dependencies arising from running on the same chip, and using the same cache. These dependencies cause the standard caching algorithms to underperform. To address the new challenge, we revisit some aspects of the classical caching design. More specifically, we focus on the page replacement policy of the first cache shared between all the cores (usually the L2 cache). We make the simplifying assumption that since the cores are running independent tasks, they are accessing disjoi...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: ICS
• Authors: Avinatan Hassidim
• Keywords: ICS 2010, Theoritical Computer Science