May 2004
Abstract:The common approach to reduce cache conflicts is to increase the associativity. From a dynamic cache power perspective this associativity comes at a high cost. In this paper we present miss ratio performance and dynamic power estimates for a skewed cache and also for a new organization proposed, the elbow cache. The elbow cache extends the skewed cache organization with a relocation strategy for conflicting blocks. We show that these skewed designs significantly reduces the conflict problems while consuming up to 56% less dynamic power than a comparably performing 8-way set-associative cache.
Available as Postscript (899 kB, no cover) and compressed Postscript (227 kB, no cover)
Download BibTeX entry.