YACO: A user conducted visualization tool for supporting cache optimization

Abstract

To enhance the overall performance of an application it is necessary to improve the cache access behavior. In this case, a cache visualizer is usually needed for fully understanding the runtime cache activities and the access pattern of applications. However, it does not suffice if only visualizing what happened. More importantly, a visualizer has to provide users with the knowledge about the reason for cache misses and to illustrate how the cache behaves at the runtime. This is also the goal of YACO (Yet Another Cache-visualizer for Optimization). Different from existing tools, YACO uses a top-down approach to direct the user step-by-step to detect the problem and the solution. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.