Dale, Re: "What you may have accomplished is performance scalability. Perhaps doubling the associativity gains 5% at 1.5 GHz, 6% at 2.0 GHz, 7% at 2.5 GHz, etc. If the loss from longer look-up remains at a constant 8%, or more likely declines along the lines of 8.0% at 1.5 GHz, 7.8% at 2.0 GHz, 7.6% at 2.5 GHz, etc. the performance scalability would favor higher associativity over shorter lookup time as the design is shrunk."
I have not looked at many high frequency models, so I'll have to take your word on it. I just have two questions. One - how many high frequency models have you looked at? And two - how does this help AMD, whose CPUs increase much slower in frequency than Intel's CPUs? Assuming that you are right, one would think that Intel designers could take that into account, and simply add extra ways of associativity on to the Pentium 4 cache. Contrary to what you might think, I don't think those engineers are stupid.
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