A simulation study of two-level caches

Abstract

We report on a trace-driven simulation study to examine the effect of a two-level cache hierarchy in uniprocessors. A simulation model of a multiple-cycle-per-instruction processor was constructed to estimate the total cycles required to execute a synthetic benchmark. Results show that a second-level cache can be used to increase system performance when main memory access times are large relative to CPU cycle time. For example, the addition of a 4-cycle, 64K second-level cache following a 1-cycle, 8K first-level cache increases performance by 15 percent when used in a system with a 15-cycle primary memory. Second level caches are shown to be particularly effective when used behind small on-chip caches; adding an 8K second-level to a 1K first-level increases performance by 26 percent, assuming similar parameters. We also evaluate the performance impact of different write strategies and separate I and D caches.