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Dynamic Partitioning of Shared Cache Memory

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Abstract

This paper proposes dynamic cache partitioning amongst simultaneously executing processes/threads. We present a general partitioning scheme that can be applied to set-associative caches.

Since memory reference characteristics of processes/threads can change over time, our method collects the cache miss characteristics of processes/threads at run-time. Also, the workload is determined at run-time by the operating system scheduler. Our scheme combines the information, and partitions the cache amongst the executing processes/threads. Partition sizes are varied dynamically to reduce the total number of misses.

The partitioning scheme has been evaluated using a processor simulator modeling a two-processor CMP system. The results show that the scheme can improve the total IPC significantly over the standard least recently used (LRU) replacement policy. In a certain case, partitioning doubles the total IPC over standard LRU. Our results show that smart cache management and scheduling is essential to achieve high performance with shared cache memory.

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Authors
  1. G. E. Suh
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  2. L. Rudolph
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  3. S. Devadas
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Suh, G.E., Rudolph, L. & Devadas, S. Dynamic Partitioning of Shared Cache Memory. The Journal of Supercomputing 28, 7–26 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SUPE.0000014800.27383.8f

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:SUPE.0000014800.27383.8f

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