Implementation Issues of Way Adaptable D-NUCA Caches

In a Way Adaptable D-NUCA cache the number of active ways is dynamically varied, according to the needs of the running application, resulting in a reduction of the static power consumption without affecting performance. Because of the need of constraining the power consumption when powering up of a way, in an actual implementation of a Way Adaptable D-NUCA cache, the new way becomes available with some delay with respect to the instant in which it is needed by the application. In this work we evaluate how such a delay impact on the performance and on the effectiveness of the Way Adapting technique