Token protocol provides a new coherence framework for shared-memory multiprocessor systems. It avoids indirections of directory protocols for common cache-to-cache transfer misses, and achieves higher interconnect bandwidth and lower interconnect latency compared with snooping protocols. However, the broadcasting increases network traffic, limiting the scalability of token protocol. This paper describes an efficient technique to reduce the token protocol network traffic, called sharing relation cache. This cache provides destination set information for cache-to-cache miss requests by caching directory information for recent shared data. This paper introduces how to implement the technique in a token protocol. Simulations using SPLASH-2 benchmarks show that in a 16-core chip multiprocessor system, the cache reduced the network traffic by 15% on average.

Memory limitations are always a focus of computer architecture. The live range aware cache (LIRAC) offers a way to reduce memory access using live range information. In the LIRAC system, scratch data need not be written back if the data will no longer be used. Three kinds of software support developed for LIRAC architecture use compiler analyses, binary analyses, and trace analyses. Trace analysis results show that LIRAC can eliminate 29% of cache write-backs on average and up to 83% in the best case for the SPEC CPU 2000 benchmark. These software techniques can show the feasibility and potential benefit of the LIRAC architecture.