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Techniques for Building Timing-Predictable Embedded Systems pp 21–52Cite as

MRU Cache Analysis for WCET Estimation

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Abstract

Most previous work on cache analysis for WCET estimation assumes a particular replacement policy LRU. In contrast, much less work has been done for non-LRU policies, since they are generally considered to be very unpredictable. However, most commercial processors are actually equipped with these non-LRU policies, since they are more efficient in terms of hardware cost, power consumption, and thermal output, while still maintaining almost as good average-case performance as LRU.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The name of the MRU replacement policy is inconsistent in the literature. Sometimes, this policy is called Pseudo-LRU because it can be seen as a kind of approximation of LRU. However, we use the name MRU to keep consistency with previous works in WCET research [26, 95], and to distinguish it from another Pseudo-LRU policy PLRU [96] which uses tree structures to store access history information.

  2. 2.

    The relative competitiveness can also be used as Must/May analysis to predict the cache access behavior at individual program points. However, this relies on the analysis under other policies with typically a much smaller cache sizes (to get 1-competitiveness), which generally yields very pessimistic results.

  3. 3.

    In realistic programs, loop structures are usually subject to certain restrictions (e.g., a natural loop has exactly one header node which is executed every time the loop iterates, and there is a path back to the header node [120]). However, the properties presented in this section are not specific to any particular structure, so we define a loop in a more generic way.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

    Nan Guan (Assistant Professor)

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Guan, N. (2016). MRU Cache Analysis for WCET Estimation. In: Techniques for Building Timing-Predictable Embedded Systems. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27198-9_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-27198-9_2

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