Data cache performance of supercomputer applications
David P. Callahan, Allan Porterfield · Conference on High Performance Computing (Supercomputing) · 1990
Processor speed has been increasing faster than mass memory speed. One method of matching a processor's speed to memory's is high-speed caches. This paper examines the data cache performance of a set of computationally intensive programs. Our interset in measuring cache performance arises from an interest in improving the performance of program during compilation. We observed that the data caches contained the values for between 45% and 99+% of the array accesses, depending on the cache and the program. The delays from the misses accounted for up to half of the total execution time of the program. The misses were grouped in a subset of source program references which resulted in misses on every access. Aggressive compilers should be able to improve program performance by focusing on those array accesses that result in cache misses.