Instruction reference patterns in data flow programs

Instruction reference patterns in data flow environments differ from those in conventional systems. Because execution is data driven in data flow environments, patterns of instruction references depend on data references. Also, instruction reference patterns are two-dimensional because execution is parallel. In this paper, models of instruction reference patterns are presented to illustrate program behavior and to provide insight into the potential usefulness of an instruction cache or virtual memory in data flow environments. The results establish that locality exists and is exploitable in some data flow environments.