Download or read book Compiler-directed Cache Coherence Strategies for Large-scale Shared-memory Multiprocessor Systems written by Hoichi Cheong and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cache coherence maintenance problem has been the major obstacle in using private cache memory to reduce memory access latency in large-scale multiprocessor systems. Two compiler-directed solutions, the fast selective invalidation scheme and the version control scheme, are proposed in this work. Contrary to the existing hardware-based approach, the proposed schemes expose caches to software-directed management techniques which have the advantage of requiring no global communication and maintaining expandability of the multiprocessor systems. The fast selective scheme employs compile-time flow analysis techniques to detect cache data that contain obsolete values, and uses simple hardware to prevent using such data. The version control scheme defines the concept of version of a program variable to maintain up-to-date copies in the cache and solves the difficult problem of preserving temporal locality in parallel execution. Unlike existing software-directed schemes, both schemes achieve selective invalidation with very low time penalty. The version control scheme is also extended to hierarchical cache systems for which no satisfactory solutions exist. Detailed discussion on the development of these schemes and their proofs are presented. Finally, experimental data by simulation are shown to support the advantage of the schemes.