Chapter 4

Cache Memory
Characteristics of Computer Memory
• Location
• Capacity
• Unit of transfer
• Access method
• Performance
• Physical type
• Physical characteristics
• Organisation
Location
• CPU
• Internal
• External
Capacity
• Word size
—The natural unit of organisation
• Number of words
—or Bytes
Unit of Transfer
• Internal
—Usually governed by data bus width
• External
—Usually a block which is much larger than a
word
• Addressable unit
—Smallest location which can be uniquely
addressed
—Word internally
—Cluster on M$ disks
Access Methods (1)
• Sequential
—Start at the beginning and read through in
order
—Access time depends on location of data and
previous location
—e.g. tape
• Direct
—Individual blocks have unique address
—Access is by jumping to vicinity plus
sequential search
—Access time depends on location and previous
location
—e.g. disk
Access Methods (2)
• Random
—Individual addresses identify locations exactly
—Access time is independent of location or
previous access
—e.g. RAM
• Associative
—Data is located by a comparison with contents
of a portion of the store
—Access time is independent of location or
previous access
—e.g. cache
Memory Hierarchy
• Registers
—In CPU
• Internal or Main memory
—May include one or more levels of cache
—―RAM‖
• External memory
—Backing store
Memory Hierarchy - Diagram
Performance
• Access time
—Time between presenting the address and
getting the valid data
• Memory Cycle time
—Time may be required for the memory to
―recover‖ before next access
—Cycle time is access + recovery
• Transfer Rate
—Rate at which data can be moved
Physical Types
• Semiconductor
—RAM
• Magnetic
—Disk & Tape
• Optical
—CD & DVD
• Others
—Bubble
—Hologram
Physical Characteristics
• Decay
• Volatility
• Erasable
• Power consumption
Organisation
• Physical arrangement of bits into words
• Not always obvious
—e.g. interleaved
The Bottom Line
• How much?
—Capacity
• How fast?
—Time is money
• How expensive?
• Footprint
—How much space it will take?
—Not mentioned in text b/c, at the same chip
area, larger footprint simply means more
expensive
Hierarchy List
• Registers This hierarchy does
• L1 Cache not apply to all
computers, e.g.
• L2 Cache
• L3 Cache
• Main memory
• Expanded memory
• Disk cache
(in IBM PCs running
• Disk DOS)
• Optical
• Tape
So you want it fast?
• It is possible to build a computer which
uses only static RAM (SRAM, described
later)
• This would be very fast (10 ns access
time, compared to about 60 ns for DRAM)
• This would need no cache
—How can you cache cache?
• This would cost a lot and need a huge
chip, b/c SRAM has larger footprint than
DRAM.
What makes caching possible:
Locality of Reference

During the execution of a program, memory

references tend to cluster in relatively small
areas of memory
• e.g. loops

Idea: copy those small areas into a smaller but

faster memory – the cache!
• Most memory operations will only need to access
the cache (fast)
• Transfers between cache and main memory are
slow, but they are seldom executed
• The average access time is practically equal to
the cache access time!
Cache
• Small amount of fast memory
• Sits between normal main memory and
CPU
• May be physically located on the CPU chip
or right next to it on the motherboard
(connected through a dedicated bus)
Source: http://www.read.cs.ucla.edu/111/2007spring/notes/lec9
Cache and Main Memory
Cache/Main Memory Structure
Cache operation

• CPU requests contents of memory location

• Check cache for this data
• If present, get from cache (fast)
• If not present, read required block from
main memory to cache
• Then deliver from cache to CPU
• Cache includes tags to identify which
block of main memory is in each cache
slot
Cache Read Operation
Typical Cache Organization
Cache Design Problems
• Addressing
• Size
• Mapping Function
• Replacement Algorithm
• Write Policy
• Block Size
• Number of Caches
Cache Addressing
Where does the cache sit in case of CPUs with
virtual memory?

Memory management unit - Wikipedia

Virtual vs. physical cache trade-off
memory management unit
 Cache Sizes
Year of
Processor Type L1 cache L2 cache L3 cache
Introduction
IBM 360/85 Mainframe 1968 16 to 32 KB — —
PDP-11/70 Minicomputer 1975 1 KB — —
VAX 11/780 Minicomputer 1978 16 KB — —
IBM 3033 Mainframe 1978 64 KB — —
IBM 3090 Mainframe 1985 128 to 256 KB — —
Intel 80486 PC 1989 8 KB — —
Pentium PC 1993 8 KB/8 KB 256 to 512 KB —
PowerPC 601 PC 1993 32 KB — —
PowerPC 620 PC 1996 32 KB/32 KB — —
PowerPC G4 PC/server 1999 32 KB/32 KB 256 KB to 1 MB 2 MB
IBM S/390 G4 Mainframe 1997 32 KB 256 KB 2 MB
IBM S/390 G6 Mainframe 1999 256 KB 8 MB —
Pentium 4 PC/server 2000 8 KB/8 KB 256 KB —
High-end server/
IBM SP 2000 64 KB/32 KB 8 MB —
supercomputer
CRAY MTAb Supercomputer 2000 8 KB 2 MB —
Itanium PC/server 2001 16 KB/16 KB 96 KB 4 MB
SGI Origin 2001 High-end server 2001 32 KB/32 KB 4 MB —
Itanium 2 PC/server 2002 32 KB 256 KB 6 MB
IBM POWER5 High-end server 2003 64 KB 1.9 MB 36 MB
CRAY XD-1 Supercomputer 2004 64 KB/64 KB 1MB —
Mapping Function

3 techniques exist:
• Direct
• Associative
• Set-associative

For all 3, the following example will be used:

• Word size is 1 Byte
• Cache is 64kB
• Cache line is 4 Bytes
— The cache has 16k (214) lines
— A cache line can hold an integer
• Main memory is 16MB
— 24 bit address (224=16M)
Direct Mapping from Cache to Main Memory

b = 4 Bytes in our example What is m? Calculate!

How many times is the main memory larger than the cache?
Direct Mapping
• Each block of main memory maps to only
one cache line
—i.e. if a block is in cache, it must be in one
specific place
• Each cache line maps to multiple main
memory blocks
—256 in our example!
—What pattern do these 256 blocks have?
 Direct Mapping
— What pattern do these 256 blocks have?
— Yes, they are equally spaced every m blocks!

Source: http://cs.njit.edu/~sohn/cs650/lec8.pdf

Parking lot analogy 

Direct Mapping
— What pattern do these 256 blocks have?
— Yes, they are equally spaced every m blocks!

• Use ―modulo‖ arithmetic: i = j mod m

—i is cache line number
—j is main memory block number
—m is number of lines in cache

Try it out on our example! What cache line does

memory block 42000 go to?
Direct Mapping Cache Line Table

Cache line Main Memory blocks held

0 0, m, 2m, 3m…2s-m

1 1,m+1, 2m+1…2s-m+1

…
m-1 m-1, 2m-1,3m-1…2s-1
We have covered pp. 111-126 in the text.
Read all explanations in the text and
thoroughly understand the modulo
operation!
5-minute quiz
1. Explain in as few words as possible the
relation between a block and a line

2. A cache has 2k (=211 = 2048) lines and

its main memory has 1GB. The block size
is 8 Bytes.
— How many blocks does the main memory
have?
— How many times larger is the main memory
than the cache?
— If direct mapping is used, where does block
10,000 go in the cache?
Heads up!

Cache-related questions are

always present in ETS and GRE
exams for CS, CEng and EE!
 Direct Mapping Address Structure

For the purpose of addressing the cache, the main

memory address is split into 3 parts:
• Least Significant w bits identify a unique word
within the block/line (2w = b)
• Most Significant s bits identify a unique memory
block. They are further split into:
• a cache line field of r bits (2r = # of lines in cache)
• a tag field of the remaining s-r bits
Word
Tag t = s-r bits Line identifier r bits w bits
8 14 2
 Direct Mapping Address Structure
Word
Tag t = s-r bits Line identifier r bits w bits
8 14 2

In our example:
• 24 bit address
• w = 2 bit word identifier (22 = 4 Bytes in a block)
• s = 22 bit block identifier
— r = 14 bit line identifier
— 8 bit tag (=22-14)

Remember the 256 blocks of main memory that can map onto
a given cache line? 28 = 256 (Coincidence?)

No two blocks that map to the same line have the same Tag!
 Direct Mapping Address Structure
Word
Tag t = s-r bits Line identifier r bits w bits
8 14 2

No two blocks in the same line have

the same Tag!

That’s why only the tag needs to be

physically attached to the cache
line.
 Direct Mapping Address Structure

How does the cache controller know if a certain

memory word (byte) is in the cache?
• Good news: In binary, it’s very easy to perform ―j
mod m‖ when m is a power of 2
• Find the line #using the ―middle‖ r bits of the
address
• Check tag of that line to see if the block is the
correct one among the possible 256 that map there
Direct Mapping Cache Organization
Direct
Mapping
Example

What should we call

these rectangles?
Well, their size is the
size of the cache and
they’re made up of
blocks …so how
about cache-size
superblocks?

Draw the very next

cache-sized super-
block (and its
binary addresses)
Direct Mapping pros & cons

• Simple
• Inexpensive
• Fixed location for given block
—If a program accesses 2 blocks that map to
the same line repeatedly, cache misses are
very high, a.k.a. thrashing
Victim Cache
• Lower miss penalty
• Remember what was discarded
—Already fetched
—Use again with little penalty
• Fully associative ... See below
• Very small, 4 to 16 cache lines
• Between a direct-mapped L1 cache and
next memory level
Associative Mapping
A main memory block can load into any line
of cache

Parking lot analogy 

Associative Mapping
• The main memory address is split
between tag and word
—Compared to direct mapping, the tag is now
longer, as it includes the old line ID
— # of lines in cache is independent of address
format
• Tag uniquely identifies each block of main
memory
• Every line’s tag is examined for a match
— In parallel, for the sake of speed
— Cache searching requires a lot of hardware
expensive
Fully Associative Cache Organization
Associative Mapping
Address Structure

Word
Tag 22 bit 2 bit

• 22-bit tag stored with each 32-bit line of data

• Compare tag field with tag entry in cache to
check for hit
• Least significant 2 bits of address identify which
8-bit word is required from the 32-bit line
Extra-credit question

With the numbers in our example, what is the total

number of input lines to the Compare circuit?

• Cache is 64kB
• Cache line is 4 Bytes
— The cache has 16k
(214) lines
• Main memory is 16MB
— 24 bit address
Is it even possible to build a fully
associative cache controller of this size?

Yes, but only by using memories with built-

in hardware for parallel comparison both
at the bit and word levels!

Content-addressable memory - Wikipedia

Associative
Mapping
Example
Associative Mapping pros & cons

• Simple to understand
• Very expensive to implement the compare
function
• Flexibility to store blocks anywhere
— Miss ratio can be improved using various
replacement algorithms (later ...)
— Miss ratio is lowest of all mappings, so we
would choose it when the miss penalty is very
high (e.g. weapons control systems)
 Set Associative Mapping
• Cache is divided into a number of sets
• Each set contains a number of lines
• A given block maps to any line in a given set

Source: http://cs.njit.edu/~sohn/cs650/lec8.pdf
Set Associative Mapping

Parking lot analogy 

Our example:
• Cache is 64kB
• Cache line is 4 Bytes
— The cache has 16k
(214) lines
• Main memory is 16MB
— 24 bit address

Assume two-way associative cache:

• The 214 lines are grouped in sets of 2 lines →213
sets →13 bit set number
• Block number in main memory is modulo 213
• 000000, 00A000, 00B000, 00C000 … map to the
same set
K – Way Set-Associative Cache
Organization
Set Associative Mapping
Address Structure

Word
Tag 9 bit Set 13 bit 2 bit

• Use set field to determine cache set to

look in
• Compare tag field to see if we have a hit
• e.g
—Address Tag Data Set
number
—1FF 7FFC 1FF 12345678 1FFF
—001 7FFC 001 11223344 1FFF
Problem 4.1 / 146

• 4-way set-associative cache

• Main memory has 4k blocks
• Each block has 128 words

Show address format

Lab week 4
• 4.2
• 4.3
• 4.5

• 4.17
• 4.18

• 4.19 Hint: Use formula on p.116

Two-Way Set-Associative Mapping
Example
We have covered pp. 126-134 in the text.
Read all explanations in the text and
thoroughly understand the examples!
Figure 4.16
Varying Associativity over Cache Size
1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
Hit ratio

0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
1k 2k 4k 8k 16k 32k 64k 128k 256k 512k 1M
Cache size (bytes)
direct
2-way
4-way
8-way
16-way
5-minute quiz
• How many sets are there in a
— Direct-addressed cache
— Fully-associative cache?
• A 4-way set-associative cache has 2 k
lines. How many sets does it have?
• The main memory associated with the
above cache has 2 MB, byte-level
addressing and 8 Byte/block.
—Derive the address structure
—How long are the tags in the cache?
Example continues …
• A 4-way set-associative cache has 2 k
lines. How many sets does it have?
• The main memory associated with the
above cache has 2 MB, byte-level
addressing and 8 Byte/block.
—Derive the address structure
—How long are the tags in the cache?
—Where in the cache is the word with
address 1242AB (hex)?
Extra-credit question
From table 4.3, it seems that cache size hasn’t
been following Moore’s Law

Why not?
Replacement Algorithms (1)
Direct mapping

• No choice, b/c each block only maps to

only one line
• Replace that line!
Replacement Algorithms (2)
Associative & Set Associative
• Here there is a choice!
—Exactly how many alternatives are there?
• Algorithms are always implemented in the
hardware, for speed:
—Least Recently used (LRU)
– E.g. in 2 way set associative which of the 2 blocks is
LRU?
—First in first out (FIFO)
– Replace block that has been in cache longest
—Least frequently used
– Replace block which has had fewest hits
—Random
– Works surprisingly well! (And it’s simple!)
Write Policy

Why is writing to a cache trickier?

• Must not overwrite a cache block unless

main memory is up to date
• A single CPU can have multiple caches
(L1, L2 etc.)
• Multiple CPUs may each have individual
caches
• I/O devices may address main memory
directly
Write through
• All writes go to main memory as well as
cache
• Whenever a word is written to the cache,
it is also written to main memory
• Problems:
—Other caches get out of sync (a.k.a. cache
coherency problem)
—Lots of traffic
—Slows down writes
Write back

• Updates initially made in cache only

• Update bit (a.k.a. dirty or used) for cache
line is set when update occurs
• If block is to be replaced, write to main
memory only if dirty bit is set
• Problems:
—Other caches get out of sync
—I/O must access main memory through cache

Do we have this problem with write through?

Example 4.3 / 137

• Which is ―better‖, write through or write

back?
• It depends ...
Putting the write problem in perspective

• In usual desktop applications, only 15% of

memory references are writes (on
average)
—But can go up to 50% for HPC applications!
• Remember Amdahl’s Law!
Today we’ve covered pp.136-137 of the text.
Cache coherency
• Is a problem whenever multiple CPUs maintain
caches (copies) of data from a shared memory
resource
• Critical in parallel computing applications:
—Supercomputers and computer clusters
—Multi-core CPUs

Source: Cache coherence - Wikipedia

Cache coherency approaches
• Bus watching with write through
—Snooping
—Snarfing
• Dedicated hardware to monitor and
enforce coherency
—Directory-based
• Avoid problem altogether by making the
shared memory non-cacheable

More details in 17.3

 Line Size
• Retrieve not only desired word but a number of
adjacent words as well
• Increased block size will increase hit ratio at first
— the principle of locality
• But at some point the hit ratio will start
decreasing, b/c larger blocks:
— Reduce total number of blocks that fit in cache
— Cause data to be overwritten shortly after being fetched
— Each additional word is less local so less likely to be
needed
• There is an optimum, but it depends on
computer and application:
— 8 to 64 bytes for desktops and servers
— 64 and 128 bytes for HPC
 Multilevel Caches

• High logic density enables caches on chip

—Faster than bus access
—Frees bus for other transfers
• Common to use both on and off chip cache
—L1 on chip, L2 off chip, both SRAM
—L2 access much faster than DRAM or ROM
—L2 often uses separate data path
—L2 may now be on chip (PentiumPro, a.k.a. "686")
—Resulting in L3 cache
– Bus access or now on chip…
Remember Back-side bus!

Which CPU had it first?

Hit Ratio (L1 & L2) for 8 kB and 16 kB L1
 How about L3 cache?
• Initially (cca. 1995) it was off-chip SRAM
—Alpha 21164
• Then it followed the trend, migrating on-chip
• Today’s state of the art: quad-core CPUs with
dedicated L1 and L2, and shared L3 (all on same
chip)

Source: Athlon II Or Phenom II: Does Your CPU Need L3 Cache?

 How about L3 cache?
All implementations of L3 have high associativity (b/c it
impacts all cores!), e.g.
• Intel Core i5 and Core i7:
— 32KB of 8-way associative L1 data cache and 32KB of 4-
way associative L1 instruction cache.
— 256 kB of L2 cache 8-way set-associative
— 8 MB of L3 cache 16-way associative
• AMD Phenom II X4:
— 2-way set-associative L1 cache, which offers lower
latencies. To compensate for possible misses, it features
twice the memory capacity: 64KB data and 64KB
instruction cache.
— 2 MB of L2 cache 8-way set-associative
— 6 MB of L3 cache 48-way associative!
Source: Athlon II Or Phenom II: Does Your CPU Need L3 Cache?
Unified vs. Split Caches
• One cache for data and instructions or
two, one for data and one for instructions
• Advantages of unified cache
—Higher hit rate
– Balances load of instruction and data fetch
– Only one cache to design & implement
• Advantages of split cache
—Eliminates cache contention between
instruction fetch/decode unit and execution
unit
– Important in pipelining
CISC case study: Pentium 4 Cache
• 80386 – no on chip cache
• 80486 – 8k using 16 byte lines and four way set
associative organization
• Pentium (all versions) – two on chip L1 caches
— Data & instructions
• Pentium III – L3 cache added off chip
• Pentium 4
— L1 caches
– 8k bytes
– 64 byte lines
– four way set associative
— L2 cache
– Feeding both L1 caches
– 256k
– 128 byte lines
– 8 way set associative
— L3 cache on chip
 Intel Cache Evolution
Processor on which feature
Problem Solution first appears
Add external cache using faster 386
External memory slower than the system bus. memory technology.

Move external cache on-chip, 486

Increased processor speed results in external bus becoming a operating at the same speed as the
bottleneck for cache access. processor.

Add external L2 cache using faster 486

Internal cache is rather small, due to limited space on chip technology than main memory

Contention occurs when both the Instruction Prefetcher and Create separate data and instruction Pentium
the Execution Unit simultaneously require access to the caches.
cache. In that case, the Prefetcher is stalled while the
Execution Unit’s data access takes place.

Create separate back-side bus that Pentium Pro

runs at higher speed than the main
(front-side) external bus. The BSB is
Increased processor speed results in external bus becoming a dedicated to the L2 cache.
bottleneck for L2 cache access.
Move L2 cache on to the processor Pentium II
chip.

Add external L3 cache. Pentium III

Some applications deal with massive databases and must
have rapid access to large amounts of data. The on-chip
caches are too small. Move L3 cache on-chip. Pentium 4
Pentium 4 Block Diagram Fetches instructions
from L2, decodes them
Schedules micro-ops based on into micro-ops, stores
data dependence and micro-ops in L1
resources.
May execute speculatively,
trying to keep pipeline full.
What is out-of-order execution (OOE)?

This new paradigm alters the von Neumann fetch-

execute cycle:
• Instruction fetch.
• Instruction dispatch to an instruction queue.
• Instruction waits in queue until its input operands
are available. Instruction is then allowed to leave
the queue before earlier, older instructions.
• Instruction is issued to the appropriate functional
unit and executed by that unit.
• Results are queued.
• Only after all older instructions have their results
written back to the registers, this result is written
back to the registers.

More at Out-of-order execution - Wikipedia

Why micro-operations?

• Pentium instructions are long, complex, and

don’t all have the same size. This prevents an
efficient hardware implementation of the CPU’s
Control Unit.
• Idea: Convert instructions into RISC-like, simple
instructions, called micro-ops.
— Micro-ops have fixed, short length, making possible
superscalar pipelining and scheduling
— Performance is further improved by separating decoding
from scheduling & pipelining
• Micro-ops are stored in an L1 cache dedicated to
instructions, a.k.a. instruction cache (split
cache design!)
Pentium 4 Data Caches
• The other half of the L1 cache is dedicated to
data, a.k.a. data cache
• Data cache is write back
— Write backs are scheduled whenever the internal bus is
free, thus making L1 a sort of write buffer for L2
— Can be configured to write through
• L1 cache controlled by 2 bits (in a CPU register)
— CD = cache disable
— NW = not write through
— The combination CD = 0, NW = 1 is forbidden (WHY?)
• There are also 2 Pentium instructions to
invalidate (flush) cache and write back then
invalidate
• L2 and L3 are both 8-way set-associative
— Line size 128 bytes
 RISC case study: ARM L1 Cache

Core Cache Cache Size (kB) Cache Line Size Associativity Location Write Buffer
Type (words) Size (words)

ARM720T Unified 8 4 4-way Logical 8

ARM920T Split 16/16 D/I 8 64-way Logical 16

ARM926EJ-S Split 4-128/4-128 D/I 8 4-way Logical 16

ARM1022E Split 16/16 D/I 8 64-way Logical 16

ARM1026EJ-S Split 4-128/4-128 D/I 8 4-way Logical 8

Intel StrongARM Split 16/16 D/I 4 32-way Logical 32

Intel Xscale Split 32/32 D/I 8 32-way Logical 32

ARM1136-JF-S Split 4-64/4-64 D/I 8 4-way Physical 32

ARM Cache Organization
• Small (8-32 B) FIFO write buffer
—Enhances memory write performance
—Between cache and main memory
—Small c.f. cache
—Data put in write buffer at processor clock
speed
—Processor continues execution
—External write in parallel until empty
—If buffer full, processor stalls
—Data in write buffer not available until written
– So keep buffer small
ARM Cache and Write Buffer Organization
Does ARM have only L1 cache?
• Up to ARM v6, L2 was optional
• Starting with ARM v7, L2 cache is part of
the architecture

• L3 cache has only partial support, see

ARM Information Center
Homework for Ch.4 – Due Thu, Oct 7

End-of-chapter problems:
• 4
• 6
• 8
• 12
• 19 (Hint: Use formula from Ex. 4.1, p.116)
• 25
Lab week 5
In Table 4.5 / 143 it is stated that the
following combination of the cache control
bits is invalid: CD = 0, NW = 1.
Read the description of these bits carefully
and explain why the combination is
invalid.
— Hint: What happens when a "dirty" line needs
to be overwritten due to a cache miss?
Lab week 5
Experimenting with the first cache simulator from
the text website:
http://williamstallings.com/COA/Animation/Links.html
Lab week 5

• 4.14 Hint: Use an additional 2 bits per line to

keep track of use.

• 4.15

• 4.17 Denote by T the cache access time.

Calculate the total time needed in both scenarios
as a function of T, then take the ratio.

• 4.19 Hint: Use formula on p.116