This document outlines the planned enhancements and features for the Cache Simulator project. Tasks are organized by priority and implementation complexity.
- Implement multi-core processor model
- Add coherence traffic simulation between processors
- Extend MESI protocol implementation for multi-processor interactions
- Implement synchronization primitives simulation
- Add statistical tracking for coherence traffic
- Develop tests for multi-processor scenarios
- Implement streaming/chunked trace processing
- Add memory-efficient trace parsing
- Optimize cache data structures for memory usage
- Implement parallel simulation processing
- Add progress reporting for long-running simulations
- Create benchmarks for performance validation
- Implement FIFO (First-In-First-Out) policy
- Implement NRU (Not Recently Used) policy
- Add Random replacement policy
- Implement PLRU (Pseudo-LRU) variants
- Create a pluggable policy framework
- Add comparative analysis tools for policy evaluation
- Design victim cache structure
- Implement victim cache lookups and updates
- Add victim cache statistical tracking
- Create configuration options for victim cache
- Implement tests for victim cache behavior
- Add documentation for victim cache usage
- Implement write-through policy
- Add no-write-allocate policy
- Implement write-combining buffer
- Create hybrid write policy options
- Add statistical tracking for write behavior
- Create tests for write policy validation
- Implement non-inclusive cache hierarchies
- Add exclusive cache hierarchy option
- Implement inclusive policy with back-invalidation
- Create statistical tracking for inclusion effects
- Add documentation for hierarchical policy options
- Implement tests for hierarchy policies
- Implement more detailed text-based visualization
- Add support for memory access pattern visualization
- Create cache state visualization tools
- Add statistical charting capabilities
- Implement trace visualization tools
- Add memory hierarchy visualization
- Design a graphical user interface
- Implement configuration panel
- Add real-time simulation visualization
- Implement results dashboard
- Create interactive performance charts
- Add trace generation and editing capabilities
- Research and implement power consumption models
- Add area estimation for different cache configurations
- Create power/performance tradeoff analysis tools
- Implement energy efficiency optimizations
- Add thermal modeling capabilities
- Create reporting for power and area metrics
- Implement Global History Buffer (GHB) prefetcher
- Add Markov prefetcher implementation
- Implement context-triggered prefetching
- Add PC-based prefetching if trace format supports it
- Create hybrid prefetching strategies
- Implement machine learning-based prefetching
- Create interface to CPU simulators
- Implement memory system interface
- Add support for importing from other trace formats
- Create export capabilities for simulation results
- Add integration with performance visualization tools
- Implement dynamic trace generation via instrumentation
- Create comprehensive API documentation
- Add more usage examples and tutorials
- Create video demonstrations
- Develop educational materials
- Add research case studies
- Create contributor guidelines
- Set up continuous integration
- Add code quality metrics
- Create contribution templates
- Add project roadmap
- Implement automated testing pipeline
- Create community discussion platform
Each feature should be implemented with the following in mind:
- Backward compatibility: New features should not break existing functionality
- Configurability: Features should be configurable via command-line or config files
- Testing: Each feature should include comprehensive unit and integration tests
- Documentation: All features should be documented in the appropriate files
- Performance: Implementations should consider performance implications
- Modern C++: Use C++17 features appropriately
For reference, these features have already been implemented:
- ✅ StreamBuffer class for sequential prefetching
- ✅ Basic prefetching logic in the Cache class
- ✅ Prefetching statistics in the MemoryHierarchy class
- ✅ Basic stride-based prefetching
- ✅ Adaptive prefetching implementation with the AdaptivePrefetcher class
- ✅ MESI protocol implementation with the MESIProtocol class
- ✅ Comprehensive test suite (unit tests and validation tests)
- ✅ Trace generation and analysis tools
- ✅ Configuration utilities and statistics tracking
- ✅ LRU replacement policy implementation