Is it possible to disable memory cache?

[mjaver]

Hi,



I am conducting research on real-time systems as part of my Master's thesis. The platform we are using is the National Instruments PXI-8186 which uses the Mobile Intel Pentium IV, 2.2GHz. The System bus is 400MHz and the socket is MICRO FC PGA 478 pin with 512 KB L2 Cache. The PXI-8186 uses the Mobile 845 Chipset.



I was wondering if it was possible to disable the memory cache for this chip (maybe by setting a flag in a register, or some other way). I know it will degrade the performance, but wanted to run some tests to determine if the application would run more predictably. It is one of areas I am exploring to try to determine if we can predict if an application will meet its hard real-time deadline.



Thanks,

Mahdi Javer

[Vladimir_Dudnik]

Hello,

first of all I recommend you to study Intel processor datasheets. You also might find it interesting to read similar topic, which had a place on this forum some time ago

http://softwareforums.intel.com/ids/board/message?board.id=IPP&message.id=1486

As I understand you can't disable cache from user mode application, you need to run at ring0 to be able to access processor control registers.

Regards,
Vladimir