Data cache performance of supercomputer applications

Abstract

The data cache performance of a set of computationally intensive programs is examined. The measurement of cache performance arises from an interest in improving the performance of a program during compilation. It was observed that the data caches contained the values for between 45% and 99+% of the array access, depending on the cache and the program. The delays from the misses accounted for up to half of the total execution time of the program. The misses were grouped in a subset of source program references which resulted in misses on every access. It is pointed out that aggressive compilers should be able to improve program performance by focusing on those array accesses that result in cache misses.