Improve Prefetch Performance by Splitting the Cache Replacement Queue

The performance of a prefetch cache is dependent on both the prefetch technique and the cache replacement policy. Both these algorithms execute independently of each other, but they share a data structure the cache replacement queue. This paper shows that even with a simple prefetch technique, there is an increase in hit rate when the LRU replacement queue is split into two equal sized queues. A more significant performance improvement is possible with a sophisticated prefetch technique and by splitting the queue unequally.