Hybrid analytical modeling of pending cache hits, data prefetching, and MSHRs

As the number of transistors integrated on a chip continues to increase, a growing challenge is accurately modeling performance in the early stages of processor design. Analytical models have been employed to rapidly search for higher performance designs, and can provide insights that detailed simulators may not. This paper proposes techniques to predict the impact of pending cache hits, hardware prefetching, and realistic miss status holding register (MSHR) resources on superscalar performance in the presence of long latency memory systems when employing hybrid analytical models that apply instruction trace analysis. Pending cache hits are secondary references to a cache block for which a request has already been initiated but has not yet completed. We find pending hits resulting from spatial locality and the fine-grained selection of instruction profile window blocks used for analysis both have non-negligible influences on the accuracy of hybrid analytical models and subsequentl...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: MICRO
• Authors: Xi E. Chen, Tor M. Aamodt
• Keywords: Analytical Models, Cache Hits, Hardware, Hybrid Analytical Models, MICRO 2008