Entropy representation of memory access characteristics and cache performance

Cache memories play important roles in modern computer architecture. Performance of a cache memory largely depends on spatial and temporal locality in memory access. Highly local access results good cache performance. In this paper, we discuss locality features in memory access and cache performance. We first discuss distribution function of memory access, and then, introduce an entropy concept. We define two new entropies based on memory access behavior and cache access. Preliminary evaluation results of cache performance and entropy values are reported.