Estimation of simulation error due to trace inaccuracies

The effect of trace inaccuracies on the evaluation of cache performance using trace driven simulation is examined. It is demonstrated that very inaccurate results are obtained when using a trace from which all operating system references have been removed. The notion of trace components is defined, providing a framework for quantifying the error in simulation results when portions of the complete reference sequence are missing from the trace. Using a set of accurate and complete traces taken from an i486 system running Mach 2.6, it is established that omission of a small fraction of the operating system references can lead to very inaccurate simulation results.<
>