Global management of cache hierarchies

Cache memories currently treat all blocks as if they were equally important, but this assumption of equally importance is not always valid. For instance, not all blocks deserve to be in L1 cache. We therefore propose globalized block placement, and we present a global placement algorithm for managing blocks in a cache hierarchy by deciding where in the hierarchy an incoming block should be placed. Our technique makes decisions by adapting to the access patterns of different blocks. The contributions of this paper are fourfold. First, we motivate our solution by demonstrating the importance of a globalized placement scheme. Second, we present a method to categorize cache block behavior into one of four categories. Third, we present one potential design exploiting this categorization. Finally, we demonstrate the performance of the proposed design. For the SPEC CPU benchmark suite, the scheme enhances overall system performance (IPC) by an average of 12% over a traditional LRU scheme, re...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: CF
• Authors: Mohamed Zahran, Sally A. McKee
• Keywords: Applied Computing, CF 2010, Globalized Block Placement, Globalized Placement Scheme, L1 Cache