Prediction caches for superscalar processors

摘要

Processor cycle times are currently much faster than memory cycle times, and this gap continues to increase. Adding a high speed cache memory allows the processor to run at full speed, as long as the data it needs is present in the cache. However, memory latency still affects performance in the case of a cache miss. Prediction caches use a history of recent cache misses to predict future misses and to reduce the overall cache miss rate. This paper describes several prediction caches, and introduces a new kind of prediction cache, which combines the features of prefetching and victim caching. This new cache is shown to be more effective at reducing miss rate and improving performance than existing prediction caches.