Dinero IV Trace-Driven Uniprocessor Cache Simulator

by Jan Edler, formerly of NEC

and Mark D. Hill, Univ. of Wisconsin Computer Sciences

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~markhill/DineroIV

Dinero IV is a cache simulator for memory reference traces. It includes the following major changes over Dinero III.

• subroutine-callable interface in addition to trace-reading program
• simulation of multi-level caches
• simulation of dissimilar I and D caches
• better performance, especially for highly associative caches
• classification of compulsory, capacity, and conflict misses
• support for multiple input formats
• cleaned up and modernized code, improved portability

Some deep-seated limitations:

• Dinero IV is not a timing simulator. There is no notion of simulated time or cycles, only references.
• Dinero IV is not a functional simulator. Data & instructions do not move in and out of the caches; in fact they don't exist! The primary result of simulation with Dinero IV is hit and miss information.
• Dinero IV isn't multi-threaded. If you have a multiprocessor with enough memory, you can run multiple independent simulations concurrently.

The basic idea is to simulate a memory hierarchy consisting of various caches connected as one or more trees, with reference sources (the processors) at the leaves and a memory at each root. The various parameters of each cache can be set separately (architecture, policy, statistics). During initialization, the configuration to be simulated is built up, one cache at a time, starting with each memory as a special case. After initialization, each reference is fed to the appropriate top-level cache by a single simple function call. Lower levels of the hierarchy are handled automatically.

At some future time, Dinero IV may be extended to simulate multiprocessors. In the meantime, there is no support for consistency, so for practical purposes, the tree of caches will not be very branchy (the only time where multiple sources will feed into a cache is when separate instruction and data caches are used).

Dinero IV is copyrighted software, but freely available for non-commercial use. The terms are explained here. Full source and documentation in gzipped tar format can be downloaded by anonymous ftp from Wisconsin.

Dinero IV is built with Gnu autoconf, and has been tested with x86/Linux, Alpha/Linux, Alpha/OSF, SGI/IRIX-6, RS6000/AIX, x86/Solaris, and Sparc/Solaris.

Dinero IV was written by Jan Edler and Mark D. Hill:

    Dr. Jan Edler                    Prof. Mark D. Hill
    Address TBD                      Computer Sciences Dept.
    Address TBD                      Univ. of Wisconsin
    Address TBD                      Madison, WI 53706
    edler@computer.org               
    edler@acm.org

Known Bugs

• Reported 9/15/2003 by Alexandra Fedorova working with Christopher Small

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