Electrical computers and digital processing systems: processing – Processing control – Branching
Patent
1997-12-19
2000-09-12
Coulter, Kenneth
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: processing
Processing control
Branching
G06F 932
Patent
active
061192228
ABSTRACT:
A microprocessor (10) and corresponding system (300) is disclosed in which prefetch of instruction or data from higher level memory (11; 307; 305) may be performed in combination with a fetch from a lower level cache (16). A branch target buffer (56) has a plurality of entries (63) associated with branching instructions; in addition to the tag field (TAG) and target field (TARGET), each entry (63) includes prefetch fields (PF0 ADDR; PF1 ADDR) containing the addresses of memory prefetches that are to be performed in combination with the fetch of the branch target address. Graduation queue and tag check circuitry (27) is provided to update the contents of the prefetch fields (PF0 ADDR; PF1 ADDR) by interrogating instructions that are executed following the associated branching instruction to detect instructions that involve cache misses, in particular the target of the next later branching instruction.
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patent: 5826052 (1998-10-01), Stiles et al.
patent: 5864697 (1999-01-01), Shiell
Bondi James O.
Shiell Jonathan H.
Coulter Kenneth
Donaldson Richard L.
Lake Rebecca Mapston
Texas Instruments Incorporated
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