Column-associative Caches: A Technique For Reducing The Miss Rate Of Direct-mapped Caches

A. Agarwal, S.D. Pudar
Proceedings of the 20th Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture  
Direct-mapped caches are a popular design choice for highperfortnsnce processors;unfortunately, direct-mapped cachessuffer systematic interference misses when more than one address maps into the sensecache set. This paper &scribes the design of column-ossociotive caches.which minhize the cofllcrs that arise in direct-mapped accesses by allowing conflicting addressesto dynamically choose alternate hashing functions, so that most of the cordiicting data canreside in the cache. At the sametime,
more » ... ever, the critical hit accesspath is unchanged. The key to implementing this schemeefficiently is the addition of a reho.dsM to eachcache se~which indicates whether that set stores data that is referenced by an alternate hashing timction. When multiple addressesmap into the samelocatioz theserehoshed locatwns are preferentially replaced. Using trace-driven simulations and en analytical model, we demonstrate that a column-associative cacheremoves virtually all interference missesfor large caches,without altering the critical hit accesstime.
doi:10.1109/isca.1993.698559 fatcat:2fqyoa4clfa3xijt7ni7zgjipi