MRU-Tour-based Replacement Algorithms for Last-Level Caches

Memory hierarchy design is a major concern in current microprocessors. Many research work focuses on the Last-Level Cache (LLC), which is designed to hide the long miss penalty of accessing to main memory. To reduce both capacity and conflict misses, LLCs are implemented as large memory structures with high associativities. To exploit temporal locality, LRU is the replacement algorithm usually implemented in caches. However, for a high-associative cache, its implementation is costly in terms of area and power consumption. Indeed, LRU is not well suited for the LLC, because as this cache level does not see all memory accesses, it cannot cope with temporal locality. In addition, blocks must descend down to the LRU position of the stack before eviction, even when they are not longer useful. In this paper, we show that most of the blocks are not referenced again once they leave the MRU position. Moreover, the probability of being referenced again does not depend on the location on the LRU stack. Based on these observations, we define the number of MRU-Tours (MRUTs) of a block as the number of times that a block occupies the MRU position while it is stored in the cache, and propose the MRUT replacement algorithm, which selects the block to be replaced among the blocks that show only one MRUT. Variations of this algorithm have been also proposed to exploit both MRUT behavior and recency of information. Experimental results show that, compared to LRU, the proposal reduces the MPKI up to 22%, while IPC is improved by 48%.