Cache Optimization Methodologies and Automation

Abstract

Architectural techniques for reducing cache misses are expensive to implement and they do not have a global view of the complete program which limits their effectiveness. Thus compiler optimizations are the most attractive alternative which can overcome both the above shortcomings of a hardware implementation. In this chapter, we will investigate the current state-of-the-art in compiler optimizations for caching. Afterwards, we propose a stepwise methodology which allows a designer to perform a global optimization of the program for a given cache organization. Then each of the main cache related steps will be studied in more detail including both problem formulations and techniques to solve them. The effectiveness of these automatable techniques will be substantiated by realistic demonstrators.