Time-Analysable Non-Partitioned Shared Caches for Real-Time Multicore Systems

TitleTime-Analysable Non-Partitioned Shared Caches for Real-Time Multicore Systems
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2014
AuthorsSlijepcevic, M, Kosmidis, L, Abella, J, Quiñones, E, Cazorla, FJ
Secondary TitleProceedings 51st Design Automation Conference San Francisco DAC 2014
Date Published06/2014
Place PublishedCalifornia
Abstract

Shared caches in multicores challenge Worst-Case Execution Time (WCET) estimation due to inter-task interferences. Hardware and software cache partitioning address this issue although they complicate data sharing among tasks and the Operating System (OS) task scheduling and migration. In the context of Probabilistic Timing Analysis (PTA) time-randomised caches are used. We propose a new hardware mechanism to control inter-task interferences in shared time-randomised caches without the need of any hardware or software partitioning. Our proposed mechanism effectively bounds inter-task interferences by limiting the cache eviction frequency of each task, while providing tighter WCET estimates than cache partitioning algorithms. In a 4-core multicore processor setup our proposal improves cache partitioning by 56% in terms of guaranteed performance and 16% in terms of average performance.

Citation Key12988