Invention Grant
- Patent Title: Prefetching in data processing circuitry
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Application No.: US15910122Application Date: 2018-03-02
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Publication No.: US10776274B2Publication Date: 2020-09-15
- Inventor: Lucas Garcia , Geoffray Matthieu Lacourba , Natalya Bondarenko , Nathanael Premillieu
- Applicant: Arm Limited
- Applicant Address: GB Cambridge
- Assignee: Arm Limited
- Current Assignee: Arm Limited
- Current Assignee Address: GB Cambridge
- Agency: Nixon & Vanderhye P.C.
- Main IPC: G06F12/00
- IPC: G06F12/00 ; G06F12/0862

Abstract:
Data processing circuitry comprises a cache memory to cache a subset of data elements from a main memory; a processing element to execute program code to access data elements having respective memory addresses, the processing element being configured to access the data elements in the cache memory and, in the case of a cache miss, to fetch the data elements from the main memory; prefetch circuitry, responsive to an access to a current data element, to initiate prefetching into the cache memory of a data element at a memory address defined by a current offset value relative to the address of the current data element; and offset value selection circuitry comprising: an address table to store memory addresses for which a data element accessed by the processing element resulted in a cache miss or an access to a previously prefetched data element; and detector circuitry to detect, for each of a group of candidate offset values, one or more respective metrics representing a proportion of a set of data element accesses which resulted in a cache miss or an access to a previously prefetched data element, for which the memory address for that data element access differs by the candidate offset value from a memory address in the address table; in which the detector circuitry is configured to process the group of candidate offset values as successive complementary sub-groups of one or more of the group of candidate offset values and to set a next instance of the current offset value in response to processing each sub-group, in dependence upon the proportions indicated by the one or more detected metrics for that sub-group; and the one or more metrics previously detected for the current offset value.
Public/Granted literature
- US20190272233A1 PREFETCHING IN DATA PROCESSING CIRCUITRY Public/Granted day:2019-09-05
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