Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2005, Volume 3515/2005, 182-190, DOI: 10.1007/11428848_23

Optimization-Oriented Visualization of Cache Access Behavior

Jie Tao and Wolfgang Karl

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Abstract

Cache performance is regarded as a critical issue that significantly influences the overall performance of a computer system. Hence, optimization with respect to cache behavior forms an important topic in both research and commercial areas. This work aims at helping the user in the task of cache behavior analysis with a comprehensive visualization tool. The resulted cache visualizer is capable of presenting the various aspects of cache accesses, and shows the performance data in a high-level, user-readable way. More specially, it directly leads the user to the data structures where excessive cache misses occur. It then further depicts the reason of theses misses. In addition, it helps the user to decide important parameters concerning some optimization techniques, e.g. padding stride and size of cache blocks. Examples of initial optimization based on the visualizer have proven the feasibility of this visualization tool.

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