Analysis of allocation deviation in multi-core shared cache pseudo-partition

Abstract

Allocation deviation is a commonly encountered problem in cache partition mechanism, especially pseudo partition mechanism, such as PIPP. We augment some bits to the line's status field to store the source core Id of incoming cache requests and sample the whole cache, then quantitatively analyze allocation deviation of multi-core pseudo-partition in shared last-level-cache. And we emphasize some factors that influence allocation deviation, such as the cache quota, the contention of concurrent workingset etc. Furthermore we discuss flexible handling of allocation deviation to benefit to the whole performance according to the cache utility characteristics of the benchmarks. Through our experiments and analysis, we conclude that in pseudo-partition, allocation deviation happens frequently due to the contention and improper cache quota, and it needs to be more flexibly handled. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.