Speculative store buffer

Details Speculative store buffer Speculative store buffer

1997-12-16

2000-05-16

Yoo, Do Hyun

Electrical computers and digital processing systems: memory

Storage accessing and control

Control technique

711117, 711154, 712 23, 712216, G06F 1200

Patent

active

060651032

ABSTRACT:
A speculative store buffer is speculatively updated in response to speculative store memory operations buffered by a load/store unit in a microprocessor. Instead of performing dependency checking for load memory operations among the store memory operations buffered by the load/store unit, the load/store unit may perform a lookup in the speculative store buffer. If a hit is detected in the speculative store buffer, the speculative state of the memory location is forwarded from the speculative store buffer. The speculative state corresponds to the most recent speculative store memory operation, even if multiple speculative store memory operations are buffered by the load/store unit. Since dependency checking against the memory operation buffers is not performed, the dependency checking limitations as to the size of these buffers may be eliminated. The speed at which dependency checking can be performed may in large part be determined by the number of storage locations within the speculative store buffer (as opposed to the number of memory operations which may be buffered in the memory operation buffers or buffers).

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"Computer Architecture: A quantitative Approach", Hennessy and Patterson, Morgan Kaufman Publishers, Inc., 1990, p. 288.

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