Molecular Cache For Multi Core Processors

Abstract: The present invention discloses a molecular cache that is an apparatus designed to avoid the problem of cache pollution on shared caches present in chip multiprocessors. Molecular caches use small, direct mapped building blocks called molecules. Molecules are aggregated to obtain partitioned cache configurations of different sizes, associativity, line size etc. Since each cache access triggers access only to a subset of molecules, as opposed to that of an equivalent monolithic cache, the total dynamic power dissipation is reduced. In keeping with Moore's Law, the movement towards sub-lOOnm technologies will enable introduction of chip multiprocessors (CMP) with 64 or more processing elements and deep cache hierarchies. Multi-programming in CMP amplifies the effects of cache pollution due to diverse memory requirements of the applications. By maintaining thread-specific private spaces within caches (i.e. cache partitions) the problem of cache pollution can be ameliorated . The total dynamic power consumed by the cache can be influenced through architectural optimizations, such as using small sized direct mapped caches Small sized direct mapped caches can increase the amount of cache pollution due to an increase in collisions. In this paper, we address these seemingly conflicting requirements through "Molecular Caches".

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