SFFMap: Set-First Fill mapping for an energy efficient pipelined data cache

Conventionally, consecutively addressed blocks are mapped onto different sets in cache. In this work, we propose a new block address mapping, Set-First Fill (SFFMap), for pipelined L1 data caches wherein consecutively addressed data blocks are mapped onto the same set. This increases the inter-block spatial locality within the cache set. In order to exploit SFFMap, we propose to store and if possible, access the most recently used set in the cache´s pipeline registers. Further, selective access (SSA) and selective update (SSU) techniques are proposed for set-buffer to increase the effectiveness of SFFMap. Our experimental evaluation for in-order and out-of-order processors with an 8-way set-associative data cache shows that SFFMap, together with SSA and SSU, achieves around 27% reduction in dynamic energy and 4-5% performance improvement. The proposed techniques need minor modifications to the existing hardware, making it an adoptable design.