Invention Grant
- Patent Title: Combined branch prediction and cache prefetch in a microprocessor
- Patent Title (中): 在微处理器中组合分支预测和高速缓存预取
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Application No.: US994596Application Date: 1997-12-19
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Publication No.: US6119222APublication Date: 2000-09-12
- Inventor: Jonathan H. Shiell , James O. Bondi
- Applicant: Jonathan H. Shiell , James O. Bondi
- Applicant Address: TX Dallas
- Assignee: Texas Instruments Incorporated
- Current Assignee: Texas Instruments Incorporated
- Current Assignee Address: TX Dallas
- Main IPC: G06F9/38
- IPC: G06F9/38 ; G06F12/08 ; G06F9/32
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.
Public/Granted literature
- US5384957A Method for producing a magnet roll Public/Granted day:1995-01-31
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