Hierarchical multiple associative mapping in cache memories

In this paper, a new cache placement scheme is proposed to achieve higher hit ratios with respect to the two conventional schemes namely set-associative and direct mapping. Similar to set-associative, in this scheme, cache space is divided into sets of different sizes. Hence, the length of tag fields associated to each set is also variable and depends on the partition it is in. The proposed mapping function has been simulated with some standard trace files and statistics are gathered and analyzed for different cache configurations. The results reveal that the proposed scheme exhibits a higher hit ratio compared to the two well-known mapping schemes, namely set-associative and direct mapping, using LRU replacement policy. Also, its area and power consumption is less than full-associative scheme.