Loading...

Object-aware cache: Higher hit-ratio in object-oriented ASIPs

Goudarzi, M ; Sharif University of Technology | 2004

80 Viewed
  1. Type of Document: Article
  2. Publisher: 2004
  3. Abstract:
  4. At any point in time in an object-oriented (OO) program, a class method is running whose set of unconditionally-accessed data fields can be statically determined. We propose to fetch this set prior to or during the method execution to increase the data cache hit-ratio. This requires that either the software directs the processor cache controller, or the processor is aware of the currently running class method. We follow the latter approach by extending our previous work where we introduced the object-oriented application-specific instruction processor (OO-ASIP) as a processor whose instruction-set consist of methods of a class library. Such an OO-ASIP is aware of the currently running method and can therefore prefetch the unconditionally-accessed data fields of the called object to the cache. This is a "directed" hardware prefetching policy compared to "speculative" (pre)fetching of traditional caches. We develop formulas for the hit-ratio and show that this approach results in higher hit-ratio than a traditional cache
  5. Keywords:
  6. Directed fetching policy ; Embedded system ; Hardware data prefetch ; Object-oriented ASIP
  7. Source: Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering; Technology Driving Innovation, 2004, Niagara Falls, 2 May 2004 through 5 May 2004 ; Volume 2 , 2004 , Pages 0653-0656 ; 08407789 (ISSN)