AMP: Adaptive Multi-stream Prefetching in a Shared Cache

Abstract— Prefetching is a widely used technique in modern data storage systems. We study the most widely used class of prefetching algorithms known as sequential prefetching. There are two problems that plague the state-of-the-art sequential prefetching algorithms: (i) cache pollution, which occurs when prefetched data replaces more useful prefetched or demand-paged data, and (ii) prefetch wastage, which happens when prefetched data is evicted from the cache before it can be used. A sequential prefetching algorithm can have a fixed or adaptive degree of prefetch and can be either synchronous (when it can prefetch only on a miss), or asynchronous (when it can also prefetch on a hit). To capture these distinctions we define four classes of prefetching algorithms: Fixed Synchronous (FS), Fixed Asynchronous (FA), Adaptive Synchronous (AS), and Adaptive Asynchronous (AA). We find that the relatively unexplored class of AA algorithms is in fact the most promising for sequential prefetc...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: FAST
• Authors: Binny S. Gill, Luis Angel D. Bathen
• Keywords: Cache, FAST 2007, Operating System, Sequential, Sequential Prefetching Algorithm