The influence of caches on the performance of heaps

  • Authors:

  • Anthony LaMarca;Richard Ladner

  • Affiliations:

  • -;-

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Experimental Algorithmics (JEA)
  • Year:
  • 1996

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Abstract

As memory access times grow larger relative to processor cycletimes, the cache performance of algorithms has an increasinglylarge impact on overall performance. Unfortunately, most commonlyused algorithms were not designed with cache performance in mind.This paper investigates the cache performance of implicit heaps. Wepresent optimizations which significantly reduce the cache missesthat heaps incur and improve their overall performance. We presentan analytical model called collective analysis that allows cacheperformance to be predicted as a function of both cacheconfiguration and algorithm configuration. As part of ourinvestigation, we perform an approximate analysis of the cacheperformance of both traditional heaps and our improved heaps in ourmodel. In addition empirical data is given for five architecturesto show the impact our optimizations have on overall performance.We also revisit a priority queue study originally performed byJones [25]. Due to the increases in cache miss penalties, therelative performance results we obtain on today's machines differgreatly from the machines of only ten years ago. We compare theperformance of implicit heaps, skew heaps and splay trees anddiscuss the difference between our results and Jones's.