
4.3 Evaluating an Architectural Idea or Trade-off 241
Miss [^ Miss
ratio \ ratio
/
Knee
Cache size Cache size
(a) Portion to left of knee is not fiat (b) No flat regions for realistic caches
FIGURE 4.10 Miss rate versus cache size curves that do not consist of sharp knees separated
by flat regions
Cache Block Size and Associativity
In addition to the problem size, the number of processors, and the cache size, the
cache block size is another important parameter for determining the benefits of
block transfer. The issues are a little more complicated, however. Long cache blocks
themselves act like small block transfers for programs with good spatia ...