High Performance and Predictable Shared Last-level Cache for Safety-Critical Systems

We propose ZeroCost-LLC (ZCLLC), a novel shared inclusive last-level cache (LLC) design for timing predictable multi-core platforms that offers lower worst-case latency (WCL) when compared to a traditional shared inclusive LLC design. ZCLLC achieves low WCL by eliminating certain memory operations in the form of cache line invalidations across the cache hierarchy that are a consequence of a core’s memory request that misses in the cache hierarchy and when there is no vacant entry in the LLC to accommodate the fetched data for this request. In addition to low WCL, ZCLLC offers performance benefits in the form of additional caching capacity and unlike state-of-the-art approaches, ZCLLC does not impose any constraints on its usage across multiple cores. In this work, we describe the impact of LLC cache line invalidations on the WCL and systematically build solutions to eliminate these invalidations resulting in ZCLLC. We also present ZCLLC, an optimized variant of ZCLLC that offers lower WCL and improved average-case performance over ZCLLC. We apply optimizations to the shared bus arbitration mechanism and extend the micro-architecture of ZCLLC to allow for overlapping memory requests to the main memory. Our analysis reveals that the analytical WCL of a memory request under ZCLLC is 87.0%, 93.8%, and 97.1% lower than that under state-of-the-art LLC partition sharing techniques for 2, 4, and 8 cores, respectively. ZCLLC shows average-case performance speedups of 1.89 ×, 3.36 ×, and 6.24 × compared to the state-of-the-art LLC partition sharing techniques for 2, 4, and 8 cores, respectively. When compared to the original ZCLLC that does not have any optimizations, ZCLLC shows lower analytical WCLs that are 76.5%, 82.6%, and 86.2% lower compared to ZCLLC-NORMAL for 2, 4, and 8 cores, respectively.