• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
• /
• v.32 no.11_12
• /
• pp.608-616
• /
• 2005

A cache architecture is proposed here which evokes prefetch at level 1 cache miss. Existing structures only prefetch at level 2 cache miss. In the proposed cache architecture, level 1 cache miss would select demand fetch block and prefetch block from the level 2 cache and store to level 1 cache and prefetch cache, respectively. According to an experimental analysis using 11 benchmark programs, the hierarchical cache architecture that employs both a level 1 cache prefetcher and a level 2 cache prefetcher obtained a maximum $19\%$ increased performance when compared to the cache architecture that employs only a level 2 cache prefetcher.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
• /
• v.32 no.11_12
• /
• pp.541-556
• /
• 2005

The memory access latency of the system has been a primary factor of performance degradation in single-processor system and multi-processor system. The remote memory access latency takes a lot of overhead over the local memory access latency especially in the distributed shared-memory system. To resolve this problem, the multi-level cache architecture that contains a remote cache in the multi-processor system has been proposed. In this paper, we propose a new cache replacement policy that improves the performance of the multi-processor system with the remote cache. If the multi-level cache keeps the multi-level inclusion(MLI) property and uses the LRU(Least Recently Used) cache replacement policy, the LRU information of the higher-level cache(a processor cache) would be different with that of the lower-level cache(a remote cache). In this situation, the replacement of a remote cache line can induce the exchange of a processor cache line that is used by the processor. It is a main factor of performance degradation in a whole system. To alleviate this disadvantage of the LRU replacement polity, the new policy analyses tht processor's remote memory access pattern of each node and uses this information to reduce the number of invalidations of the useful cache line in the higher-level cache. The new replacement policy of the remote cache can improve the performance by $3.5\%$ in maximum and $2.5\%$ in average on SPLASH-2 benchmarks, compared to the general LRU cache replacement policy.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
• /
• v.37 no.5
• /
• pp.292-303
• /
• 2010

On-chip cache memories play an important role in both performance and energy consumption points of view in resource-constrained embedded systems by filtering many off-chip memory accesses. We propose a 2-level data cache architecture with a low energy-delay product tailored for the embedded systems. The L1 data cache is small and direct-mapped, and employs a write-through policy. In contrast, the L2 data cache is set-associative and adopts a write-back policy. Consequently, the L1 data cache is accessed in one cycle and is able to provide high cache bandwidth while the L2 data cache is effective in reducing global miss rate. To reduce the penalty of high miss rate caused by the small L1 cache and power consumption of address generation, we propose an ECP(Early Cache hit Predictor) scheme. The ECP predicts if the L1 cache has the requested data using both fast address generation and L1 cache hit prediction. To reduce high energy cost of accessing the L2 data cache due to heavy write-through traffic from the write buffer laid between the two cache levels, we propose a one-way write scheme. From our simulation-based experiments using a cycle-accurate simulator and embedded benchmarks, the proposed 2-level data cache architecture shows average 3.6% and 50% improvements in overall system performance and the data cache energy consumption.

• KIPS Transactions on Computer and Communication Systems
• /
• v.1 no.1
• /
• pp.1-10
• /
• 2012

The way-lookup cache and the way-tracking cache are considered to be the most energy-efficient when used for level 1 and level 2 caches, respectively. This paper proposes an energy-efficient set-associative cache using the bi-mode way-selector that combines the way selecting techniques of the way-tracking cache and the way-lookup cache. The simulation results using an Alpha 21264-based system show that the bi-mode way-selecting L1 instruction cache consumes 27.57% of the energy consumed by the conventional set-associative cache and that it is as energy-efficient as the way-lookup cache when used for L1 instruction cache. The bi-mode way-selecting L1 data cache consumes 28.42% of the energy consumed by the conventional set-associative cache, which means that it is more energy-efficient than the way-lookup cache by 15.54% when used for L1 data cache. The bi-mode way-selecting L2 cache consumes 15.41% of the energy consumed by the conventional set-associative cache, which means that it is more energy-efficient than the way-tracking cache by 16.16% when used for unified L2 cache. These results show that the proposed cache can provide the best level of energy-efficiency regardless of the cache level.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.35-41
• /
• 2012

Due to the technology scaling, more transistors can be placed on a cache memories of a processor. However, processors become more vulnerable to the soft error because of the highly integrated transistors, and consequently, the reliability of the cache memory must consider seriously at the design space level. In this paper, we propose the reliability improving technique which can be achieved with low energy and low area overheads. The simulation experiments of the proposed scheme shows over 95.4% of protection rate against the soft error with only 0.26% of performance degradations. Also, It requires only 2.96% of extra energy consumption.

• IEIE Transactions on Smart Processing and Computing
• /
• v.2 no.4
• /
• pp.226-239
• /
• 2013

A number of systems have several on-chip memories with cache memory being one of them. Conventional cache memory consists of SRAM but the ratio of static energy to the total energy of the memory architecture becomes larger as the leakage power of traditional SRAM increases. Spin-Torque Transfer RAM (STT-RAM), which is a variety of Non-Volatile Memory (NVM), has many advantages over SRAM, such as high density, low leakage power, and non-volatility, but it consumes too much writing energy. This study evaluated a wide range of energy consumptions of a two-level cache using NVM partially on a mobile processor. Through a number of experimental evaluations, it was confirmed that the use of NVM partially in the two-level cache effectively reduces energy consumption significantly.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
• /
• v.15 no.5
• /
• pp.546-553
• /
• 2015

Recently, flash cache is widely adopted as the performance accelerator of legacy storage systems. Unlike other cache media, flash cache should be carefully managed as it has peculiar characteristics such as long write latency and limited P/E cycles. In particular, we make two prominent observations that can be utilized in managing flash cache. First, a serious worn-out problem happens when the working-set of a system is beyond the capacity of flash cache due to excessively frequent cache replacement. Second, more than 50% of data has no hit in flash cache as it is a second level cache. Based on these observations, we propose a cache admission control policy that does not cache data when it is first accessed, and inserts it into the cache only after its second access occurs within a certain time window. This allows the filtering of data disruptive to flash cache in terms of endurance and performance. With this policy, we prolong the lifetime of flash cache 2.3 times without any performance degradations.

• Journal of Information Processing Systems
• /
• v.17 no.1
• /
• pp.51-62
• /
• 2021

On-chip caches of graphics processing units (GPUs) have contributed to improved GPU performance by reducing long memory access latency. However, cache efficiency remains low despite the facts that recent GPUs have considerably mitigated the bottleneck problem of L1 data cache. Although the cache miss rate is a reasonable metric for cache efficiency, it is not necessarily proportional to GPU performance. In this study, we introduce a second key determinant to overcome the problem of predicting the performance gains from L1 data cache based on the assumption that miss rate only is not accurate. The proposed technique estimates the benefits of the cache by measuring the balance between cache efficiency and throughput. The throughput of the cache is predicted based on the warp occupancy information in the warp pool. Then, the warp occupancy is used for a second bypass phase when workloads show an ambiguous miss rate. In our proposed architecture, the L1 data cache is turned off for a long period when the warp occupancy is not high. Our two-level bypassing technique can be applied to recent GPU models and improves the performance by 6% on average compared to the architecture without bypassing. Moreover, it outperforms the conventional bottleneck-based bypassing techniques.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
• /
• v.25 no.4B
• /
• pp.783-787
• /
• 2000

A microprocessor, which is used as a CPU for state-of-the-art personal computers, adopts 256KB or 512KB L2(Level 2) cache memory. This cache hires Direct Mapping Procedure, 32B Line Size, and no Write Allocation. In this cache architecture, we can expert about 2.5% hit ratio improvement by using 8-way Set Associative Mapping instead of Direct Mapping, 128B Line Size instead of 32B, and Write Allocation.

• Journal of KIISE:Computer Systems and Theory
• /
• v.33 no.5
• /
• pp.306-315
• /
• 2006

In general, the hit ratio of the first level cache is one of the most important factors in determining the performance of computer systems. Prefetching from lower level memory structure is one of the most useful techniques for improving the hit ratio of the first level cache. In this paper, we propose a prefetch on continuous same page access (CSPA) scheme which improves the prefetch efficiency of the instruction cache and reduces prefetch cost at the same time. The proposed CSPA scheme traces the page addresses of executed instructions to count how many times the same memory page is accessed continuously. To increase the prefetch efficiency, the CSPA scheme initiates prefetch only if the number of accesses to the same page exceeds the threshold value. Generally, the size of a L1 cache block is smaller than that of a L2 cache block. Therefore, one L2 cache block contains a number of L1 cache blocks. To reduce the number of unnecessary accesses to the L2 cache due to prefetch, the CSPA scheme enables prefetch only when the missed L1 block and the prefetch L1 block are in the same L2 cache block, leading to reduced prefetch cost. According to our simulations, the proposed prefetching scheme improves the performance by up to 6.7%.