Comparison of hardware and software cache coherence schemes

Abstract

Mean value analysis models are used to compare representative hardware and software cache coherence schemes for a large-scale shared-memory system. The goal is to identify the workloads for which either of the schemes is significantly better. The methodology improves upon previous analytical studies and complements previous simulation studies by developing a common high-level workload model that is used to derive separate sets of low-level workload parameters for the two schemes. This approach allows an equitable comparison of the two schemes for a specific workload.