Dynamically Variable Line-Size Cache Architecture for Merged DRAM/Logic LSIs
Koji Inoue, Koji Kai, Kazuaki J. Murakami · Kyushu University Institutional Repository (QIR) (Kyushu University) · 2000
This paper proposes a novel cache architecture suitable for merged DRAM/logic LSIs, which is called "dynamically variable line-size cache(D-VLS cache)." The D-VLS cache can optimize its line-size according to the characteristic of programs, and attempts to improve the performance by exploiting the high on-chip memory bandwidth on merged DRAM/logic LSIs appropriately. In our evaluation, it is observed that an average memory-access time improvement achieved by a direct-mapped D-VLS cache is about 20% compared to a conventional direct-mapped cache with fixed 32-byte lines. This performance improvement is better than that of a doubled-size conventional direct-mapped cache.