US Patent Application 17664722. CACHE MANAGEMENT USING CACHE SCOPE DESIGNATION simplified abstract

CACHE MANAGEMENT USING CACHE SCOPE DESIGNATION

Organization Name

International Business Machines Corporation

Inventor(s)

Taylor J. Pritchard of Austin TX (US)

Aaron Tsai of Hyde Park NY (US)

Richard Joseph Branciforte of Austin TX (US)

Ashraf Elsharif of Austin TX (US)

Gregory William Alexander of Pflugerville TX (US)

Deanna Postles Dunn Berger of Hyde Park NY (US)

Michael Fee of Cold Spring NY (US)

CACHE MANAGEMENT USING CACHE SCOPE DESIGNATION - A simplified explanation of the abstract

This abstract first appeared for US patent application 17664722 titled 'CACHE MANAGEMENT USING CACHE SCOPE DESIGNATION

Simplified Explanation

The patent application describes a cache controller that helps improve the processing of cache lines that are being accessed by multiple requestors. Here are the key points:

• The cache controller receives a fetch request for data from a requestor.
• The fetch request includes a cache scope designation, indicating the level of cache where the data may be found.
• If the requested data is already present in the high-level cache associated with the requestor (e.g., L1 cache), the cache controller immediately returns the data to the requestor.
• If the data is not in the high-level cache or if it is not within the cache pool identified by the cache scope designation, the cache controller returns a cache miss, undeliverable data, and request done instruction to the requestor.
• This approach allows the requestor to decide when and if address contention events are necessary or important.
• By allowing address contention events, the system can reduce performance issues, latencies, execution times, and inefficient use of resources.

Original Abstract Submitted

To facilitate an efficient processing of contended cache lines, a cache controller that is associated with a requestor receives a fetch request for data from the requestor. The fetch request is associated with a cache scope designation. If the data is in a high-level cache (e.g., L1 cache) associated with the requestor, the cache controller returns the requested data to the requestor. If the data is not in the high-level cache or if the data is not within the cache pool identified by the cache scope of search designation, and/or if obtaining the data is contentious, the controller returns a cache miss, undeliverable data, and request done instruction to the requestor. Such scheme allows or permits address contention events when the requestor deems such events are necessary and/or when important. As such, address contention events, performance, latencies, increased executions times, inefficient use of resources, may be diminished.