Sat, 28 Mar 2009, 02:39
A student dropped by office today, confused by problem 4. There was indeed ambiguity. So, I am rewording, it as follows: * The L1 hit rate is 0.95 for instruction references and 0.90 for data references. * The L2 hit rate is 0.85 for instruction references and 0.75 for data references. * 30% of all instructions are loads and stores. * The size of each cache block is 8 words. * The time needed to access a cache block in L1 is 1 cycle and the time needed to access a cache block in L2 is 6 cycles. * The accesses to the caches and memory are done sequentially. If there is a miss in the L1 and a hit in the L2 then the total latency is 7 cycles. * Memory is accessed only if there is a miss in both caches. * The width of the memory bus is one word. * It takes one clock cycle to send an address to main memory. * It takes 20 cycles to access the main memory. * It takes one cycle to send one word from the memory to the processor. Thus the total latency to get a word from memory to the processor is 22 cycles. * The bus allows sending a new address to memory in the same cycle that data is sent from memory to the processor. * Assume the data is accessible to the processor only AFTER the whole cache block has been brought in from the memory, and buffered on the processor chip. The processor can then access the data independent of and during the cache fill. 1. What is the average access time per instruction (assume no interleaving)? 2. What is the average access time per instruction if the main memory is 4-way interleaved? 3. What is the average access time per instruction if the main memory is 8-way interleaved? Sorry I caught this so late. Good luck with the problem set. See you in class on Monday. Yale Patt