Is cache-oblivious DGEMM viable?

Abstract

We present a study of implementations of DGEMM using both the cache-oblivious and cache-conscious programming styles. The cacheoblivious programs use recursion and automatically block DGEMM operands A, B, C for the memory hierarchy. The cache-conscious programs use iteration and explicitly block A, B, C for register files, all caches and memory. Our study shows that the cache-oblivious programs achieve substantially less performance than the cache-conscious programs. We discuss why this is so and suggest approaches for improving the performance of cache-oblivious programs. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.