CIPARSim: Cache intersection property assisted rapid single-pass FIFO cache simulation technique

Abstract

An application's cache miss rate is used in timing analysis, system performance prediction and in deciding the best cache memory for an embedded system to meet tighter constraints. Single-pass simulation allows a designer to find the number of cache misses quickly and accurately on various cache memories. Such single-pass simulation systems have previously relied heavily on cache inclusion properties, which allowed rapid simulation of cache configurations for different applications. Thus far the only inclusion properties discovered were applicable to the Least Recently Used (LRU) replacement policy based caches. However, LRU based caches are rarely implemented in real life due to their circuit complexity at larger cache associativities. Embedded processors typically use a FIFO replacement policy in their caches instead, for which there are no full inclusion properties to exploit. In this paper, for the first time, we introduce a cache property called the “Intersection Property” that helps to reduce single-pass simulation time in a manner similar to inclusion property. An intersection property defines conditions that if met, prove a particular element exists in larger caches, thus avoiding further search time. We have discussed three such intersection properties for caches using the FIFO replacement policy in this paper. A rapid single-pass FIFO cache simulator “CIPARSim” has also been proposed. CIPARSim is the first single-pass simulator dependent on the FIFO cache properties to reduce simulation time significantly. CIPARSim's simulation time was up to 5 times faster (on average 3 times faster) compared to the state of the art single-pass FIFO cache simulator for the cache configurations tested. CIPARSim produces the cache hit and miss rates of an application accurately on various cache configurations. During simulation, CIPARSim's intersection properties alone predict up to 90% (on average 65%) of the total hits, reducing simulation time immensely.