Abstract for Collins, Tullsen, "Hardware Identification of Cache Conflict
Misses"
This paper describes the Miss Classification Table, a simple mechanism
that enables the processor or memory controller
to identify each cache miss as either a conflict miss or a capacity
(non-conflict) miss. The miss classification table works by storing
part of the tag of the most recently evicted line of a cache set.
If the next miss to that cache set has a matching tag, it is identified
as a conflict miss. This technique correctly identifies 87\% of misses
in the worst case.
Several applications of this information are demonstrated, including
improvements to victim caching, next-line prefetching, cache exclusion,
and a pseudo-associative cache. This paper also presents the Adaptive
Miss Buffer (AMB), which combines several of these techniques, targeting
each miss with the most appropriate
optimization, all within a single small miss buffer. The AMB's
combination of techniques achieves 16% better
performance than any single technique alone.