Improving Cache Performance by Exploiting Read-Write Disparity

Samira Khan

Tuesday, Mar. 18th, 4:00pm-5:00pm
Hamerschlag Hall D-210

Abstract

Cache read misses stall the processor if there are no independent instructions to execute. In contrast, most cache write misses are off the critical path of execution, since writes can be buffered in the cache or the store buffer. With few exceptions, cache lines that serve loads are more critical for performance than cache lines that serve only stores. Unfortunately, traditional cache management mecha- nisms do not take into account this disparity between read-write criticality. The key contribution of this work is the new idea of distin- guishing between lines that are reused by reads versus those that are reused only by writes to focus cache management policies on the more critical read lines. We propose a Read-Write Partitioning (RWP) policy that minimizes read misses by dynamically partitioning the cache into clean and dirty partitions, where partitions grow in size if they are more likely to receive future read requests. We show that exploiting the differences in read-write criticality provides better performance over prior cache management mechanisms.

Bio

Samira Khan is a Post Doctoral Researcher at CMU working with Profes- sor Onur Multu, She is also associated with Intel Labs, Hillsboro. Her research focuses on improving the performance, efficiency, and reliability of memory hierarchy of modern processors. She re- ceived her PhD from the Department of Computer Science in the University of Texas at San Antonio.