A SPLIT L2 DATA CACHE FOR SCALABLE CC-NUMA MULTIPROCESSORS

Abstract

In scalable CC-NUMA multiprocessors, it is crucial to reduce the average memory access time. For applications where the second-level (L2) cache is large enough, we propose a split L2 cache to utilize the surplus space. The split L2 cache is composed of a traditional LRU cache and an RVC (Remote Victim Cache) which only stores the data of remote memory address range. Thus, it reduces the average L2 cache miss time by keeping remote blocks that would be discarded otherwise. Though the split cache does not reduce the miss rates, it is observed to reduce the total execution time effectively by up to 27%.It even outperform an LRU cache of double size.