Simulating L3 caches in real time using hardware accelerated cache simulation (HACS): a case study with SPECint 2000

Trace-driven simulation is a commonly used tool to evaluate memory-hierarchy designs. Unfortunately, trace collection is very expensive, and storage requirements for traces are very large. In this paper, we introduce HACS (Hardware Accelerated Cache Simulator), and describe the validation methods we used to demonstrate functionality. We also present some initial cache simulation results from SPECint 2000. We then propose future directions for research with HACS.