Trace driven simulation using sampled traces

Trace driven simulation is a well known method for evaluating computer architecture options and is the technique of choice in most published cache and memory studies. Ideally, a trace should contain all the necessary events generated by a program. However, this is usually impractical for all but the most trivial of programs because of trace storage and simulation time costs. As computer systems increase in performance and complexity there is a growing need to use larger and more realistic programs for trace driven simulation. This has lead to a growing interest in applying sampling techniques to reduce trace driven simulation costs. This paper reports on same experiments in trace sampling and discusses a prediction method for resolving cold-start or fill references when simulating with a sampled trace. The paper shows how a small sampled trace can capture the characteristics of a much larger trace and cache simulations results are presented using these sampled traces and the prediction method.<>