FPGA Accelerated Parameterized Cache Simulator

Shivani Shah1, Sahithi Meenakshi Vutakuru1, Nanditha Rao2
1International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore, 2IIIT Bangalore


Abstract

Design space exploration of caches enables the architect to choose the right configuration based on metrics or constraints such as hit rates, power, area, and timing. We propose to implement an FPGA accelerated parameterized two level cache simulator with prefetching. The key motivation behind the idea is the speed with which the design space exploration can be carried out as compared to software based simulators. This tool can in turn be used to compare the efficacy of results generated by tools such as CACTI, ChampSim and so on. Our tool is expected to report cache metrics such as hit/miss rates with and without prefetching for different cache configurations, along with the timing, area and power information as implemented on the FPGA.