Dataless touch to open a memory page

Details Dataless touch to open a memory page Dataless touch to open a memory page

1997-12-09

1999-11-09

Bragdon, Reginald G.

Electrical computers and digital processing systems: memory

Storage accessing and control

Hierarchical memories

711105, 711146, 711154, G06F 1208

Patent

active

059833254

ABSTRACT:
A computer system supports a touch command which may be used to open a page in the main memory. Microprocessors within the computer system may determine an appropriate time at which to perform the touch command, and then transmit the touch command to the memory controller within the computer system. In response to the touch command, the memory controller opens the selected page but may not return data from the page. Subsequent memory operations may experience a page hit memory latency instead of a page miss memory latency due to the occurrence of the touch command. Data bus bandwidth is not consumed by the touch command. The touch command may be used even if actually prefetching data is not desirable. The microprocessors in the computer system may monitor which pages are experiencing cache hits within the microprocessors. If a page is experiencing cache hits, a cache miss within the page may be more probable. The touch command may be used to prepare the main memory system for a potential cache miss.

REFERENCES:
patent: 5761515 (1998-06-01), Barton, III et al.
patent: 5774685 (1998-06-01), Dubey
patent: 5809560 (1998-09-01), Schneider
"PowerPC: Microprocessor Developer's Guide", Sams Publishing, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1995, pp. 212-213.
"Computer Architecture: A quantitative Approach", Hennessy and Patterson, Morgan Kauffman Publishers, Inc., 1990, pp. 431-432.

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