Invention Grant
- Patent Title: Servicing CPU demand requests with inflight prefetchs
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Application No.: US15730893Application Date: 2017-10-12
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Publication No.: US10210090B1Publication Date: 2019-02-19
- Inventor: Oluleye Olorode , Ramakrishnan Venkatasubramanian
- Applicant: TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INCORPORATED
- Applicant Address: US TX Dallas
- Assignee: TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INCORPORATED
- Current Assignee: TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INCORPORATED
- Current Assignee Address: US TX Dallas
- Agent Kenneth Liu; Charles A. Brill; Frank D. Cimino
- Main IPC: G06F12/00
- IPC: G06F12/00 ; G06F12/0862 ; G06F12/02 ; G06F9/38 ; G06F12/1027

Abstract:
This invention involves a particular cache hazard. It is possible that an instruction request that is a miss in the cache occurs while the cache system is servicing a pending prefetch for the same instructions. In the prior art, this hazard is detected by comparing request addresses for all entries in a scoreboard. The program memory controller stores the allocated way in the scoreboard. The program memory controller compares the allocated way of the demand request to the allocated way of all the scoreboard entries. The cache hazard only occurs when the allocated ways match. Following way compare, the demand request address is compared to the request addresses of only those scoreboard entries having matching ways. Other address comparators are not powered during this time. This serves to reduce the electrical power required in detecting this cache hazard.
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