CacheIn: A toolset for comprehensive cache inspection

Abstract

Programmers usually rely on cache performance data to optimize their applications towards high runtime cache hit ratio. In this paper, we introduce a software toolset CacheIn, which uses simulation and monitoring to collect comprehensive cache performance data. CacheIn consists of a cache simulator for modeling the cache activities, a cache monitor for gathering different kind of information, and a multilayer software infrastructure for processing the raw monitoring data towards statistical, high-level representations, like histograms and summarized numbers. CacheIn exhibits both the details of traditional software mechanisms and the feasibility of performance counters. Based on a code instrumentor, we have verified CacheIn using standard benchmarks. Initial experimental results show its full functionality in terms of providing accurate, comprehensive, and corse-grained performance data. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.