Global History Buffer

Tuesday October 25, 2005
Hamerschlag Hall D-210
4:00 pm

Mike Ferdman
Carnegie Mellon University

The Global History Buffer is a recently proposed technique for implementing Data Cache Prefetching mechanisms in modern CPUs from Kyle Nesbit and James Smith from University of Wisconsin, Madison. Prefetching with the Global History Buffer has two significant advantages over conventional table prefetching methods. First, the use of a FIFO history buffer can improve the accuracy of correlation prefetching by eliminating stale data from the table. Second, the Global History Buffer contains a more complete (and intact) picture of cache miss history, creating opportunities to design more effective prefetching methods. In this talk, I will present the Global History Buffer along with various data prefetching mechanisms that can be implemented with it.

Mike is a second year PhD candidate in the Computer Architecture Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon, where he is advised by Prof. Babak Falsafi. His time has primarily been devoted to researching DBCP and constructing LT-CORDS. His research interests include processors and anything that relates to them.