Adaptive software cache management for distributed shared memory architectures

An adaptive cache coherence mechanism exploits semantic information about the expected or observed access behavior of particular data objects. The authors contend that, in distributed shared-memory systems, adaptive cache coherence mechanisms will outperform static cache coherence mechanisms. They have examined the sharing and synchronization behavior of a variety of shared-memory parallel programs. It is found that the access patterns of a large percentage of shared data objects fall into a small number of categories for which efficient software coherence mechanisms exist. In addition, the authors have performed a simulation study that provides two examples of how an adaptive caching mechanism can take advantage of semantic information.