article

Zero cost indexing for improved processor cache performance

Author:

Tony GivargisAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems (TODAES), Volume 11, Issue 1

Pages 3 - 25

https://doi.org/10.1145/1124713.1124715

Published: 01 January 2006 Publication History

Abstract

The increasing use of microprocessor cores in embedded systems as well as mobile and portable devices creates an opportunity for customizing the cache subsystem for improved performance. In traditional cache design, the index portion of the memory address bus consists of the K least significant bits, where K = log₂ D and D is the depth of the cache. However, in devices where the application set is known and characterized (e.g., systems that execute a fixed application set) there is an opportunity to improve cache performance by choosing a near-optimal set of bits used as index into the cache. This technique does not add any overhead in terms of area or delay. In this article, we present an efficient heuristic algorithm for selecting K index bits for improved cache performance. We show the feasibility of our algorithm by applying it to a large number of embedded system applications as well as the integer SPEC CPU 2000 benchmarks. Specifically, for data traces, we show up to 45% reduction in cache misses. Likewise, for instruction traces, we show up to 31% reduction in cache misses. When a unified data/instruction cache architecture is considered, our results show an average improvement of 14.5% for the Powerstone benchmarks and an average improvement of 15.2% for the SPEC'00 benchmarks.

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Cited By

Azarian AM.P. Cardoso J(2016)Pipelining data-dependent tasks in FPGA-based multicore architecturesMicroprocessors and Microsystems10.1016/j.micpro.2016.02.00842(165-179)Online publication date: May-2016
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.micpro.2016.02.008
Díaz Álvarez JRisco-Martín JColmenar J(2016)Multi-objective optimization of energy consumption and execution time in a single level cache memory for embedded systemsJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2015.10.012111:C(200-212)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jss.2015.10.012
Ros AXekalakis PCintra MAcacio MGarcıa J(2015)Adaptive Selection of Cache Indexing Bits for Removing Conflict MissesIEEE Transactions on Computers10.1109/TC.2014.233981964:6(1534-1547)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TC.2014.2339819
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Zero cost indexing for improved processor cache performance
1. Hardware
  1. Integrated circuits
    1. Semiconductor memory

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems

ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems Volume 11, Issue 1

January 2006

250 pages

ISSN:1084-4309

EISSN:1557-7309

DOI:10.1145/1124713

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2006 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

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ACM Journals for the Design of Smart and Connected Systems

Publication History

Published: 01 January 2006

Published in TODAES Volume 11, Issue 1

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Cited By

Azarian AM.P. Cardoso J(2016)Pipelining data-dependent tasks in FPGA-based multicore architecturesMicroprocessors and Microsystems10.1016/j.micpro.2016.02.00842(165-179)Online publication date: May-2016
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.micpro.2016.02.008
Díaz Álvarez JRisco-Martín JColmenar J(2016)Multi-objective optimization of energy consumption and execution time in a single level cache memory for embedded systemsJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2015.10.012111:C(200-212)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jss.2015.10.012
Ros AXekalakis PCintra MAcacio MGarcıa J(2015)Adaptive Selection of Cache Indexing Bits for Removing Conflict MissesIEEE Transactions on Computers10.1109/TC.2014.233981964:6(1534-1547)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TC.2014.2339819
Azarian ACardoso JWerner SBecker JShin SMaldonado J(2013)An FPGA-based multi-core approach for pipelining computing stagesProceedings of the 28th Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing10.1145/2480362.2480647(1533-1540)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2480362.2480647
Zhou XPetrov P(2009)Direct address translation for virtual memory in energy-efficient embedded systemsACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems10.1145/1457246.14572518:1(1-31)Online publication date: 4-Jan-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1457246.1457251
Petrov POrailoglu A(2007)Dynamic Tag Reduction for Low-Power Caches in Embedded Systems with Virtual MemoryInternational Journal of Parallel Programming10.1007/s10766-006-0030-135:2(157-177)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10766-006-0030-1

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