CacheTrimmer: Adaptive Cache File Trimming for Optimized Performance and Lifetime on Mobile Devices

Mobile devices always cache numerous files during application runtime, which can be trimmed to improve the user experience. However, existing cache file trimming methods are unaware of the cleaning cost within the file system and storage devices, which degrades the system performance and storage lifetime, resulting in low benefits of trimming cache files. Motivated by this, an adaptive cache file trimming (CacheTrimmer) scheme is proposed to trim cache files for performance and lifetime improvement. The basic idea is to determine the trimming timing based on the cleaning cost of the file system and storage device, maximizing the benefit of trimming cache files. Specifically, CacheTrimmer includes two components: First, a cleaning cost-aware trimming method is proposed to trim cache files by recording the index information of cache files in a list and determining the timing and size of file trimming. Second, to avoid trimming-induced intra-segment fragmentation and improve trimming efficiency, a log-structured cache scheme is further proposed to maintain the cache files in separate segments. We prototype CacheTrimmer with a real mobile platform. Experimental results under real workloads show that CacheTrimmer achieves encourage performance and lifetime improvement compared to the state-of-the-art.