I have the following program which I with the help of someother on stackoverflow wrote to understand cachelines and CPU caches.I have the result of the calculation posted below.
1 450.0 440.0
2 420.0 230.0
4 400.0 110.0
8 390.0 60.0
16 380.0 30.0
32 320.0 10.0
64 180.0 10.0
128 60.0 0.0
256 40.0 10.0
512 10.0 0.0
1024 10.0 0.0
I have plotted a graph using gnuplot which is posted below.
I have the following questions.
is my timing calculation in milliseconds correct ? 440ms seems to be a lot of time?
From the graph cache_access_1 (redline) can we conclude that the size of cache line is 32 bits (and not 64-bits?)
Between the for loops in the code is it a good idea to clear the cache? If yes how do I do that programmatically?
As you can see I have some
0.0values in the result above.? What does this indicate? is the granularity of measurement too coarse?
Kindly reply.
#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#define MAX_SIZE (512*1024*1024)
int main()
{
clock_t start, end;
double cpu_time;
int i = 0;
int k = 0;
int count = 0;
/*
* MAX_SIZE array is too big for stack.This is an unfortunate rough edge of the way the stack works.
* It lives in a fixed-size buffer, set by the program executable's configuration according to the
* operating system, but its actual size is seldom checked against the available space.
*/
/*int arr[MAX_SIZE];*/
int *arr = (int*)malloc(MAX_SIZE * sizeof(int));
/*cpu clock ticks count start*/
for(k = 0; k < 3; k++)
{
start = clock();
count = 0;
for (i = 0; i < MAX_SIZE; i++)
{
arr[i] += 3;
/*count++;*/
}
/*cpu clock ticks count stop*/
end = clock();
cpu_time = ((double) (end - start)) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
printf("cpu time for loop 1 (k : %4d) %.1f ms.\n",k,(cpu_time*1000));
}
printf("\n");
for (k = 1 ; k <= 1024 ; k <<= 1)
{
/*cpu clock ticks count start*/
start = clock();
count = 0;
for (i = 0; i < MAX_SIZE; i += k)
{
/*count++;*/
arr[i] += 3;
}
/*cpu clock ticks count stop*/
end = clock();
cpu_time = ((double) (end - start)) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
printf("cpu time for loop 2 (k : %4d) %.1f ms.\n",k,(cpu_time*1000));
}
printf("\n");
/* Third loop, performing the same operations as loop 2,
but only touching 16KB of memory
*/
for (k = 1 ; k <= 1024 ; k <<= 1)
{
/*cpu clock ticks count start*/
start = clock();
count = 0;
for (i = 0; i < MAX_SIZE; i += k)
{
count++;
arr[i & 0xfff] += 3;
}
/*cpu clock ticks count stop*/
end = clock();
cpu_time = ((double) (end - start)) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
printf("cpu time for loop 3 (k : %4d) %.1f ms.\n",k,(cpu_time*1000));
}
return 0;
}
