Orthogonal design method for optimal cache configuration

Abstract

A cache configuration is one of the most important factors to improve speed of transferring information between CPU(s) and memory. In order to find the optimum cache configurations that give high hit rate with small cache size, designers have to deal with many cache parameters such as number of sets for each cache, block size for each cache line, and so on. Beside the parameters, the designers have to find what the maximum hits of the cache under the consumption that the size is unlimited. Orthogonal method is apply modern statistical methods treating simultaneously several statistical variables. A purpose of this paper is to use orthogonal design method to search for the optimal cache configuration which produces high hit rate with small size. Using the orthogonal method for the cache configuration is successful because high hit rate with small size of cache is considered in the tests. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.