Cache Lines and False Sharing

1. What is the cache line?
2. What does false sharing mean?
3. How to avoid false sharing?

Each location in the cache has a tag that contains the index of the datum
in main memory that has been cached. In a CPU’s data cache these entries are
called cache lines or cache blocks.

public static string
GetCacheBlockSize()

{

ManagementObjectSearcher
searcher = new

ManagementObjectSearcher(@”SELECT * FROM Win32_CacheMemory”);

 

foreach
(ManagementObject wmi in searcher.Get())

{

try

{

return
“Cache Block Size: ” +

wmi.GetPropertyValue(“BlockSize”).ToString();

}

catch
{ }

}

return
“Cache Block Size: Unknown”;

}

 

 

Sample 1:

class Data

{

public int _field1;

public int _field2;

}

 

private const int
_numIterations = 100000000;

private static long
_threadCounter = 2;

private static long
_startTimestamp = 0;

public static void Main()

{

Data
data = new Data();

 

_startTimestamp = Stopwatch.GetTimestamp();

 

ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(o
=> PerformTest(data, 0));

ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(o
=> PerformTest(data, 1));

 

Console.ReadKey();

}

 

 

private static void
PerformTest(Data data, byte numThread)

{

for (int i = 0; i < _numIterations; i++)

{

if
(numThread == 0)

data._field1++;

else

data._field2++;

}

 

if (Interlocked.Decrement(ref
_threadCounter) == 0)

Console.WriteLine(“It takes about {0} ms”, Stopwatch.GetTimestamp() – _startTimestamp);

}

 

Output
1: 3470119 ms

 

 

 

Sample 2:

[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Explicit)]

class Data

{

[FieldOffset(0)]

public int _field1;

[FieldOffset(64)]

public int _field2;

}

Output
2: 1649438 ms