Enhancing the EDUCache simulator with visualization of cache performance

Abstract

Computer science students use data array processing in many courses. To exploit the full power of caches and obtain higher performance, they mostly use the textbook example of sequential access of data arrays. However, a lot of discrepancies occur and the expected performance is not obtained in real life program executions, mostly due to the existence of several cache levels, with various architectures and organizations, different cache sizes and associativity, and cache line width. In addition, Students must be aware of the cache misses categorized as compulsory, capacity and conflict misses. In this paper we present an extension of our EDUCache simulator, which simulates the work of a cache and gives details on data addresses, cache occupancy and other cache parameters. The extension is realized by integrating the cache parameters with GeoGebra, the open source tool whoose primary goal is for teaching and learning mathematics. In our case, we enhance the usage for novel learning and teaching of the hardware-based courses — the Computer architecture and organization, as well as high performance computing. The extension consists of visualizing the performance behavior when a program accesses huge data arrays, analyzing real three level cache based systems, used in almost all today's conventional processors. The possibility to visualize the cache behavior dependent on various cache parameters is the final benefit of this simulator, since the students can understand the cache parameters and their impact on the overall performance. Students can design their own cache with the parameters they like and then execute some arbitrary length data array access to see the performance of the execution.