I am trying to figure out why a modified C program is running faster than its non modified counter part (I am adding very few lines of code to perform some additional work). In this context, I suspect "cache effects" to be the main explanation (instruction cache). Thus I reach the perf (https://perf.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Main_Page) profiling tool but unfortunately I am not able to understand the meaning of its outputs regarding cache misses.

Several events about cache are provided:

  cache-references                                   [Hardware event]
  cache-misses                                       [Hardware event]
  L1-dcache-loads                                    [Hardware cache event]
  L1-dcache-load-misses                              [Hardware cache event]
  L1-dcache-stores                                   [Hardware cache event]
  L1-dcache-store-misses                             [Hardware cache event]
  L1-dcache-prefetches                               [Hardware cache event]
  L1-dcache-prefetch-misses                          [Hardware cache event]
  L1-icache-loads                                    [Hardware cache event]
  L1-icache-load-misses                              [Hardware cache event]
  L1-icache-prefetches                               [Hardware cache event]
  L1-icache-prefetch-misses                          [Hardware cache event]
  LLC-loads                                          [Hardware cache event]
  LLC-load-misses                                    [Hardware cache event]
  LLC-stores                                         [Hardware cache event]
  LLC-store-misses                                   [Hardware cache event]
  LLC-prefetches                                     [Hardware cache event]
  LLC-prefetch-misses                                [Hardware cache event]
  dTLB-loads                                         [Hardware cache event]
  dTLB-load-misses          
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