A Cache Simulator for Shared Memory Systems

Abstract

Abstract. Due to the increasing gap between processor speed and memory access time, a large fraction of a program's execution time is spent in accesses to the various levels in the memory hierarchy. Hence, cacheaware programming is of prime importance. For efficiently utilizing the memory subsystem, many architecture-specific characteristics must be taken into account: cache size, replacement strategy, access latency, number of memory levels, etc. In this paper, we present a simulator for the accurate performance prediction of sequential and parallel programs on shared memory systems. It assists the programmer in locating the critical parts of the code that have the greatest impact on the overall performance. Our simulator is based on the Latency-of-Data-Access Model, that focuses on the modeling of the access times to different memory levels. We describe the design of our simulator, its configuration and its usage in an example application.

Lightweight Task Analysis for Cache-Aware Scheduling on Heterogeneous Clusters

“…Cycle-accurate simulators return a cache event in response to each instruction. They require a handle on the application being executed [17] or an exhaustive trace of the execution [16,19]. Although trace compression methods exist, these simulators are slow compared to other predictors [7].…”

Web memory hierarchy learning and research environment

“…Some memory hierarchy Simulators such as Dinero IV [10], CacheSim [11], VirtualMemory [12], CACTI [13], LDA-Cache [14] and Prima [15] (reference simulators), are known in the academic world but do not possess all the features previously referred.…”

A Memory System for Education

“…However, most of them are just parts of simulators of very complex computer systems where the memory system is not the main part of the simulator [3]. Among the simulators that focus primarily on the memory system, the most interesting ones are Dinero-Hase [4], Cachesim [5], LDA [6], Fast-Cache [7], JCachesim [8], CHESS (cache hierarchy estimator using scalable simulator) [9] and CACTI [10]. 'Dinero-HASE' is a cache memory simulator obtained by loading the Dinero module within the HASE simulator, which has two modes of operation.…”