Making Pointer-Based Data Structures Cache Conscious

13 years 4 months ago

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Processor and memory technology trends portend a continual increase in the relative cost of accessing main memory. Machine designers have tried to mitigate the effect of this trend through a hierarchy of caches and a variety of other hardware and software techniques. These techniques, unfortunately, have only been partially successful for pointer-manipulating programs. This paper explores a complementary approach of enlisting programmers and tool writers in the task of improving the cache locality of accesses to pointer-based data structures. Throughout, we exploit the location transparency of pointer-based data structures that allow changes to the memory (and cache) layout of nodes, records, fields, etc. We discuss how programmers can manually improve cache performance with techniques, such as clustering, compression, and coloring. We then explore how to lessen a programmer's burden with the help of semi-automatic and automatic tools for changing structure layout to improve cach...

Trishul M. Chilimbi, Mark D. Hill, James R. Larus

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