Efficient Utilization of Shared Caches in Multicore Architectures

Abstract

Today most of the systems run general purpose applications which have non-uniform memory accesses. This work proposes a new technique for last level cache (LLC) organization, named as hashed cache using overuse distance for ways sharing (HCOWS), to reorganize the cache memory of a system to contribute better performance in multicore systems. The proposed HCOWS technique can be applied on multicore platforms, to improve performance of cache memory and hence of a system for myriad of general purpose applications. A new mapping technique is employed using universal hashing which is highly random. This scheme employs sharing of ways instead of set sharing. This work evaluates the performance of cache hierarchy using average memory access time. HCOWS scheme-based system has given better miss rate reduction when compared with the simple baseline system by 33 % in dual core, 37 % in quad core and 41 % in octa core, which substantiates the fact that increased number of cores dispenses better performance. The proposed scheme has high impact on miss rate reduction with the increase in size of LLC rather than the associativity of LLC.