PERFORMANCE CHARACTERIZATION OF THE CACHE MEMORY EFFECT

A new performance model of the memory hierarchy is first introduced, w hich describes all possible senarios for the calculation process, incl uding the important case when the cache memory is by-passed. A detaile d study of each scenario is then given along with the derivation of co rresponding formulae. In these formulae the cache load time associated with the penalty which must be paid to transfer data between the main memory and the cache is also taken into account. A two-parameter line ar model for performance characterisation of cache memory effect is in troduced. The double-performance parameter, n(2), is defined to descri be the performance degradation for problem sizes that do not fit into the cache memory. This parameter determines the problem size required to preserve twice the asymptotic performance. A non-linear timing mode l is described as the most complex case of cache memory characterisati on. Excellent agreement is shown between the estimated performance fig ures and several benchmark measurements on iPSC/860.