Cache rationing for multicore

Abstract

As the number of transistors on a chip increases, they are used mainly in two ways on multicore processors: first, to increase the number of cores, and second, to increase the size of cache memory. The two approaches intersect at a basic problem, which is how parallel tasks can best share the cache memory. The degree of sharing determines the available cache resource for each core and hence the memory performance and scalability of the system. In this paper, cache rationing is presented as a cache sharing solution for collaborative caching.