Predictability and performance aware replacement policy PVISAM for unified shared caches in real-time multicores

Missing the deadline of an application task can be catastrophic in real-time systems. Therefore, to ensure timely completion of tasks, offline worst-case execution time and schedulability analysis is often performed for such real-time systems. One of the important inputs to this analysis is a safe upper bound of misses in each processor cache memory used by the system. Cache miss prediction techniques have matured significantly for private caches in single-core processors; however, remained as a challenge for unified, shared caches in multicore processors. According to prior studies, a task's miss upper bound on a shared cache can be predicted using available private cache prediction techniques only if the shared cache maintains core-based independent static partitions. The problem is, such partitions require the use of infeasible 'write-update consistency protocol' and wastes valuable cache space by duplicate caching. In this regard, this paper presents a novel cache replacement policy called 'predictable variable isolation in shared antipodal memory (PVISAM).' Its replacement decisions generate virtual core-based partitions that support demand-based runtime size adjustment and line sharing to better utilize space. Moreover, these partitions require no consistency protocol. Trace-driven experimental results for Parsec benchmark applications reveal that performance of a unified shared cache memory improves by 101.68 × on average (minimum 1.09× and maximum 1138.50 × ) when PVISAM is used instead of either the aforementioned write-update protocol-based predictable partitioning or the widely used write-invalidate consistency protocol-based partitioning. PVISAM can improve cache performance by 0.74 × on average (minimum 0.02 × and maximum 1.12 × ) compared to having no partitions at all. Both predictable partitioning and PVISAM improve unified, shared cache predictability by 63.44% (minimum 26.89% and maximum 99.99%) and 19.36% (minimum 1.58% and maximum 72.51%) on average compared to no partitions and write-invalidate protocol-based partitioning, respectively. Experimental results for synthetic traces show that PVISAM remarkably improves cache performance and predictability when compared to its three competitors even in scenarios that stress the cache.MOE (Min. of Education, S’pore