Paper Info
Title
The Synonym Lookaside Buffer: A Solution to the Synonym Problem in Virtual Caches
Abstract
To support dynamic address translation in today's microprocessors, the first-level cache is accessed in parallel with a translation lookaside buffer (TLB). However, this current approach faces mounting problems. This paper introduces new ideas to enable the use of virtual addresses in the cache hierarchy. The major idea is the replacement of the on-chip TLB by a synonym lookaside buffer (SLB). The SLB translates synonyms into a primary virtual address, which is a unique identifier resolving all ambiguities due to synonyms in the memory system. We introduce various system configurations with SLBs and discuss all functional issues associated with them. An SLB is much more scalable than a regular TLB. It scales with memory data set sizes, physical memory sizes and number of cores in a multiprocessor. Moreover SLB entry flushes and shootdowns due to physical memory management are eliminated. We show performance data resulting from the simulation of several applications as diverse as scientific computing, database, and JAVA virtual machines. These evaluations target SLB miss rates and flushes as well as the impact of the SLB on cache miss rates. They show that small SLBs of 8-16 entries are sufficient to solve the synonym problem in virtual caches and that their performance overhead is negligible.
Year
DOI
Venue
2008
10.1109/TC.2008.108
Computers, IEEE Transactions
Keywords
Field
DocType
cache storage,system-on-chip,virtual storage,first-level cache,physical memory management,primary virtual address,synonym lookaside buffer,synonym problem,virtual caches,Cache memories,Pipeline processors,Primary memory,Shared memory,Simulation,Virtual memory
Shared memory,Cache,CPU cache,Computer science,Virtual memory,Parallel computing,Virtual address space,Memory management,Translation lookaside buffer,Multi-core processor
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
57
12
0018-9340
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
8
0.51
22
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Xiaogang Qiu114920.35
Michel Dubois21303259.66