Tutorials Section

How to Use the HASE Dinero Tutorials

This section assumes that you currently have a copy of NT / Linux HASE with the Dinero project loaded and built. If this is not the case, please follow the guidelines in the Guide to Use section of this website.

Each tutorial is designed to be used in conjunction with reading the descriptive text on this page. Furthermore, the tutorials are designed to be run in sequential order as each builds on concepts previously introduced.

There are 14 tutorials available in HASE Dinero, each of which can be run by using the following set of instructions:

Before running a tutorial, ensure that the cache is shown at its lowest level of hierarchy. This can be done by first clicking on the Design button at the top of the HASE screen, then right-clicking on the Level 1 Cache entity. Choose Expand from the ensuing pop-up menu.
Put HASE into simulation mode. This can be done by clicking on the Simulate button at the top of the screen.
Right-click on the Simulation Control window, in the main screen, and select Simulation Parameters from the pop-up menu. Next choose the desired tutorial from the drop-down list of the Simulation Mode parameter, then click on Ok.
Go to the Simulate menu at the top of the screen and click on the Run Simulation command.
Once the simulation is completed, go back to the Simulate menu and choose the Animate command. This will load the Animation window.
Click on the Change button from the Animation window and then double-click on the tracefile.trace file in the results sub-directory.

You are now ready to view the tutorial. The recommended way of doing this is to click on the yellow button of the Animation window showing a '1' over the top left-hand corner of a page. This instructs HASE to playback one simulation time unit. Note that the tutorial can be paused in the middle of animation by clicking on the pause button. Alternatively, clicking on the play button will cause the animation to run until simulation completion.

The main benefit of using HASE Dinero in tutorial mode is the descriptive text, shown at the bottom of the HASE screen, which indicates what is currently happening in the simulation.

All of the tutorials require one or more of the following screens to be open:

	Unified Cache Contents
	Data Cache Contents
	Instruction Cache Contents
	Prefetch Buffer
	Victim Cache

To open one of the cache contents windows, right click on the Cache Memory entity (in the main window) and select View->Desired Cache Contents from the ensuing pop-up menu. Note that the resulting window can be resized and moved to suit.

To open the prefetch buffer or victim cache windows, right click on the Cache Control Unit (in the main window) and select View->Prefetch Buffer (or Victim Cache) from the ensuing pop-up menu. Note that the resulting window can be resized and moved to suit.

For an explanation of the contents of the Cache Contents windows, click here.

For an explanation of the contents of the Prefetch Buffer or Victim Cache windows, click here.

The HASE Dinero Tutorials

It is essential that you gain an understanding of how CPU addresses are used to determine where data can be stored in a cache BEFORE running any of the HASE Dinero tutorials. For an explanation of this process, click here.

The following tutorials are available:

Tutorial 1: A Direct-Mapped Cache

Tutorial 2: A Set-Associative Cache

Tutorial 3: A Fully-Associative Cache

Tutorial 4: The Benefit of Increased Block Size

Details on the Principle of Locality can be found here.

Tutorial 5: The Operation of a Split Instruction / Data Cache

Tutorial 6: A Demonstration of LRU Replacement

Tutorial 7: A Demonstration of FIFO Replacement

Tutorial 8: A Demonstration of Random Replacement

Tutorial 9: The Copy-Back Write Policy

Tutorial 10: The Write-Through, Write Policy

Tutorial 11: The Write-Through, No-Write Policy

Tutorial 12: The Always-Prefetch Fetch Policy

Tutorial 13: The Miss-Prefetch Policy

Tutorial 14: The Benefit of a Victim Cache