Effect of Cache Capacity and Block Size Inspect the table of cache misses on the first page of the spreadsheet report. Graphs of the figures in each row and each column are drawn below. You can compare this miss rate graph with Figure 7.2 in Patterson and Hennessy. Using the spread sheet, tabulate the log of the miss rate and plot this against block size and cache capacity. The fetch and store rates should not be considered in isolation when determining cache parameters.
Larger blocks require fewer tag bits to be stored.
An area of silicon may be used for a larger cache if larger blocks are used which require fewer tags per byte. The cost of fetching a random word from memory may be much higher than fetching a neighbouring word from memory. Use a fixed block size of 32 bytes. The effect of using separate instruction and data caches rather than a unified cache. The effect of the choice of fetch policy.