Lifetime-aware LRU promotion policy for last-level cache

Abstract

The traditional LRU replacement policy is susceptible to memory-intensive workloads with large non-reused data like thrashing applications and scan applications. For such workloads, the majority of cache blocks don't get any cache hits during residing in the cache. Cache performance can be improved by reducing the interference from non-reused data. Therefore, the lifetime of other blocks is increased and it can contribute to cache hit. We propose a Lifetime-aware LRU Promotion Policy and show that changing the promotion policy can effective reduce cache miss in the last-level cache. Our promotion policy dynamically adjusts promotion strategy and increases the lifetime for useful cache blocks. The experimental results show that our proposal reduces the average MPKI by 6% and 9% over EAF and DIP, respectively. In multicore, we also improve the performance and reduce the MPKI.