Dynamic Prefetch Filtering Schemes to enhance Utilization of Data Cache

Memory reference instructions such as loads or stores are critical factors that limit the processing power of processor. The prefetching technique is an effective way to reduce the latency caused from memory access. However, excessively aggressive prefetch leads to cache pollution so as to cancel out the advantage of prefetch. In this study, four filtering schemes have been compared and evaluated which dynamically decide whether to begin prefetch after referring a filtering table to decrease cache pollution. First, A bi-states scheme has been shown to analyze the lock problem of the conventional scheme, this scheme such as conventional scheme used to be N:1 mapping, but it has the two state to 1bit value of each entries. A complete state scheme has been introduced to be used as a reference for the comparative study. A block address lookup scheme has been proposed as the main idea of this paper which exhibits the most exact filtering performance. This scheme has a length of the table the same as the bi-states scheme, the contents of each entry have the fields the same as the complete state scheme recently, never referenced data block address has been 1:1 mapping a entry of the filter table. Experimental results from commonly used general benchmarks and multimedia programs show that average cache miss ratio have been decreased by 10.5% for the block address lookup scheme(BAL) compare to conventional dynamic filter scheme(2-bitSC).