Block pattern based buffer cache management

Abstract

Efficient caching of the data block in the buffer cache can overcome, the costly delays, associated with accesses made to secondary storage devices. Pattern based buffer cache management methodology is being proposed for enhancing the system performance. The block to be replaced is determined by identifying access patterns such as sequential, looping exhibited in the I/O request issued to the block, through the use of program counter. The blocks are stored in separate, pattern based partitions of the cache, which supports multiple replacement policies to best utilize the cache under that reference pattern. Marginal gain functions are used for managing the partitions. As the suggested methodology aims at improving the buffer cache hit ratio it is capable of enhancing the performance of multimedia application and heterogeneous storage environment.Also it can used for power saving in database server as increased cache hit ratio reduces the memory traffic and thus saves the energy.

Hybrid Multi-level Cache Management Policy

“…The selection of the cache block to be replaced with the main memory block is done by considering various factors like number of promotion and demotion, size of the block, and recency of the block in the cache memory [20].…”

“…Thus multilayer cache management policies like PROMOTE [1] and DEMOTE [5], LRU-K [5] have been proposed. Hints are used to identify and manage the data in multi level cache [10] [20]. Hints give the latest history of the block in the cache.…”