Do Modern LLC Replacement Policies Generalize to Modern Workloads?
Research evaluating cache replacement policies across SPEC06, SPEC17, GWT, and Ligra
ChampSimPythonBashC++LaTeX
A benchmark sweep of last-level cache replacement policies (LRU, Hawkeye, Mockingjay, and others) across SPEC06, SPEC17, and GWT workloads, built on a custom automation and plotting pipeline plus an instrumented Hawkeye build for measuring predictor false-positive rates.
Key finding
OPTgen-based policies (Hawkeye, Mockingjay) measurably hurt performance on GWT — traced back to structurally high PC entropy and a branch-bound rather than memory-bound workload character, which breaks the assumptions those policies are built on.
Notes
Also involved porting Mockingjay, Hawkeye to ChampSim’s modern class-based API