Impacts of level-2 cache on performance of multimedia systems and applications

Multimedia systems normally suffer while processing multimedia applications because of their limited resources. The demand for tremendous amount of processing power raises serious challenges for multimedia systems and applications. Studies show that cache memory has strong influence on the performance of multimedia systems and applications. In our previous work, we optimize level-1 cache parameters to enhance the performance of portable devices running MPEG4 decoder. The focus of this paper is to evaluate the impacts of level-2 cache on the performance of multimedia systems running MPEG4 and H.264/AVC encoders. We develop VisualSim model and C++ code to run the simulation. We measure miss rates, CPU utilization, and power consumed by varying level-2 cache size. Simulation results show that the performance of multimedia systems and applications can be enhanced by optimizing level-2 cache.