MOB: The Memory Organization Benchmark

Mob, the Memory Organization Benchmark is a platform-independent benchmark suite capable of detecting the properties of a memory subsystem. Its built-in analyzer is able to offer useful conclusions to the user, rather than simply presenting raw timing data.

The tests that the suite currently supports are:

Caches (Data and Instructions):

sizes and levels, sharedness, block size, associativity, replacement policy and write policy.

TLBs (Data and Instructions):

main page size, sharedness, number of entries and associativity.

The suite will run in most Unix systems and modern architecture families. Take a look here for a list of tested systems.

The suite is designed as a tool to help the user to analyze systems rather than a run-once program. Using command-line switches, it is possible to indicate parameters such as which benchmarks to perform, the number of trials, the length of each trial, verbosity level as well as input and output configuration files. By appropriately using the input configuration files, advanced users are able to tailor low-level tests. Graphic capabilities are provided through a print verbosity level which produces files for the gnuplot utility.