Targeted configurable caches

Embedded systems are increasingly moving from running single applications to running application sets. Targeted configurable caches extend the concept of configurable caches by specially supporting the critical applications of an embedded system. Other configurable caches attempt to be completely generic but a targeted configurable cache can outperform them due to reduced overheads and better partitioning from only supporting the needed configurable options for the critical applications. A comparison between a conventional configurable cache and a targeted configurable cache demonstrates targeted performance improvement to that of a conventional configurable cache.