Application-specific data cache systems

The design supports fast access time, optimal utilization of temporal and spatial localities adaptive to given applications, and a simple dynamic fetching mechanism with different fetch sizes. Support for dynamically varying the fetch size makes the cache equally effective for general-purpose as well as multimedia applications. Simulation shows that the average memory access time of the proposed cache is equal to that of a conventional direct-mapped cache with eight times as much space. In addition, our cache achieves better performance than a 2-way or 4-way set associative cache with twice as much space.