CACHE OPERATIONS BY MRU-CHANGE.

Abstract

The performance of set associative caches is considered. The cache lines are grouped into regions according to their positions in the replacement stacks of a cache, and then it is observed how the memory accesses of a CPU are distributed over these regions. Results from traces show that the memory accesses are heavily concentrated on the most recently used (MRU) region in the cache. The concept of MRU change is introduced. The concept, which uses the extent that the CPU accesses a nonMRU line to approximate the time the CPU is changing its working set, has been found to be useful in many aspects of cache design and performance evaluation.