Journal of Computing Science and Engineering

Korean Institute of Information Scientists and Engineers (한국정보과학회)
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Optimizing Instruction Prefetching to Improve Worst-Case Performance for Real-Time Applications

  • Ding, Yiqiang (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Southern Illinois University Carbondale) ;
  • Yan, Jun (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Southern Illinois University Carbondale) ;
  • Zhang, Wei (Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Southern Illinois University Carbondale)
  • Published : 2009.03.31
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Abstract

While the average-case performance is important for general-purpose applications, worst-case performance is crucial for real-time systems to ensure schedulability and reliability. Recent work has shown that simple prefetching techniques such as the Next-N-Line prefetching can benefit both average-case and worst-case performance; however, the improvement on the worstcase execution time (WCET) is rather limited and inefficient. This paper presents two instruction prefetching approaches that are specially designed to enhance the worst-case performance, including the loop-based prefetching and WCET-oriented prefetching. Our experiments indicate that both instruction prefetching techniques can achieve better worst-case execution cycles than the Next-N-Line prefetching while having various impacts on the average-case performance.

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