Lower cache_references means less cache memory is referenced, since any kind of memory is slow it is better performance.
Higher cache_references means more cache memory referenced, it is worst performance.
Another metric is: 100 * cache_misses / cache_references
Bigger % means the cache is not used.
| Benchmark | c ref. | c misses | % miss |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 938K | 179K | 19.1% |
| 2 | 71.0K | 7.25K | 10.2% |
| 3 | 6420K | 61.8K | 0% |
For Benchmark 3 the cache is used (it is 0% cache miss) but the cpu is accessing 7 times more the cache from the 1st benchmark and more than 100 times than the 2nd benchmark.
Each level of cache memory is slower. What we cannot see here if the reference is for 1st level cache (fast) or for 2nd or 3rd level cache (much slower).
Note that there are much more kernel perf metrics not exposed by poop.
I believe wall_time and peak_rss are the most useful metrics. The other metrics are mostly for performance detectives.