Evaluating associativity in CPU caches

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Abstract
The authors present new and efficient algorithms for simulating alternative direct-mapped and set-associative caches and use them to quantify the effect of limited associativity on the cache miss ratio. They introduce an algorithm, forest simulation, for simulating alternative direct-mapped caches and generalize one, which they call all-associativity simulation, for simulating alternative direct-mapped, set-associative, and fully-associative caches. The authors find that although all-associativity simulation is theoretically less efficient than forest simulation or stack simulation (a commonly used simulation algorithm), in practice it is not much slower and allows the simulation of many more caches with a single pass through an address trace. The authors also provide data and insight into how varying associatively affects the miss ratio.

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