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Asked: 2026-05-11T13:37:49+00:00

I am trying to profile and optimize algorithms and I would like to understand

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I am trying to profile and optimize algorithms and I would like to understand the specific impact of the caches on various processors. For recent Intel x86 processors (e.g. Q9300), it is very hard to find detailed information about cache structure. In particular, most web sites (including Intel.com) that post processor specs do not include any reference to L1 cache. Is this because the L1 cache does not exist or is this information for some reason considered unimportant? Are there any articles or discussions about the elimination of the L1 cache?

[edit] After running various tests and diagnostic programs (mostly those discussed in the answers below), I have concluded that my Q9300 seems to have a 32K L1 data cache. I still haven’t found a clear explanation as to why this information is so difficult to come by. My current working theory is that the details of L1 caching are now being treated as trade secrets by Intel.

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  1. It is near impossible to find specs on Intel caches. When I was teaching a class on caches last year, I asked friends inside Intel (in the compiler group) and they couldn’t find specs.

    But wait!!! Jed, bless his soul, tells us that on Linux systems, you can squeeze lots of information out of the kernel:

    grep . /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cache/index*/*

    This will give you associativity, set size, and a bunch of other information (but not latency). For example, I learned that although AMD advertises their 128K L1 cache, my AMD machine has a split I and D cache of 64K each.

    Two suggestions which are now mostly obsolete thanks to Jed:

    • AMD publishes a lot more information about its caches, so you can at least got some information about a modern cache. For example, last year’s AMD L1 caches delivered two words per cycle (peak).

    • The open-source tool valgrind has all sorts of cache models inside it, and it is invaluable for profiling and understanding cache behavior. It comes with a very nice visualization tool kcachegrind which is part of the KDE SDK.

    For example: in Q3 2008, AMD K8/K10 CPUs use 64 byte cache lines, with a 64kB each L1I/L1D split cache. L1D is 2-way associative and exclusive with L2, with latency of 3 cycles. L2 cache is 16-way associative and latency is about 12 cycles.

    AMD Bulldozer-family CPUs use a split L1 with a 16kiB 4-way associative L1D per cluster (2 per core).

    Intel CPUs have kept L1 the same for a long time (from Pentium M to Haswell to Skylake, and presumably many generations after that): Split 32kB each I and D caches, with L1D being 8-way associative. 64 byte cache lines, matching the burst-transfer size of DDR DRAM. Load-use latency is ~4 cycles.

    Also see the tag wiki for links to more performance and microarchitectural data.

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