公开(公告)号：US5915262A

公开(公告)日：1999-06-22

申请号：US681105

申请日：1996-07-22

申请人： K. Vincent Bridgers ,  Michael Drake ,  Richard W. Schuckle

发明人： K. Vincent Bridgers ,  Michael Drake ,  Richard W. Schuckle

IPC分类号： G06F12/08 ,  G06F12/00 ,  G06F13/00

CPC分类号： G06F12/0802 ,  G06F12/0888 ,  G06F2212/206

摘要： A computer system including a processor, a main memory and a cache memory uses tagging of various regions of memory to define and select caching properties of transfers between the processor and memory via the cache. The main memory contains not only standard random access memory (RAM) and read-only memory (ROM) but also memory-mapped input/output (I/O) sources. Tagging of the memory regions configures the regions for association with a particular set of caching properties. For example, a memory-mapped video I/O buffer may be tagged with a MM.sub.-- IO.sub.-- VBUF tag designating the caching properties of write-back cacheability with weak read/write ordering. Low-level operating system software, such as the Hardware Abstraction Language (HAL) interface of the Windows NT.TM. operating system or device driver software, initialize the memory regions, the cache and make symbolic associations between the memory regions and the cache. The cache, operating as directed by the memory tags, allows read and write operations that are used for performing various types of multimedia or signal processing operations including decompression, drawing operations, compression, mixing, and the like, which are performed on a virtually-cached multimedia drawing surface. The data for performing the multimedia or signal processing operations are either already located on the I/O surface or read from another storage location local to the processor or from an external processor, which is also cached and tagged as a special cached region. The processor executes operations acting on the cached data. When all operations are completely executed by the processor, only the cached memory regions are flushed using a flush instruction such as CFLSH�MM.sub.-- IO.sub.-- VBUF!. The flush instruction directs the cache to write back and invalidate the regions having the designated tag, here MM.sub.-- IO.sub.-- VBUF.

摘要翻译： 包括处理器，主存储器和高速缓冲存储器的计算机系统使用各种存储器区域的标记来定义和选择经由高速缓存处理器和存储器之间的传送的高速缓存属性。 主存储器不仅包含标准随机存取存储器（RAM）和只读存储器（ROM），还包含存储器映射的输入/输出（I / O）源。 内存区域的标记将区域配置为与一组特定的缓存属性相关联。 例如，存储器映射的视频I / O缓冲器可以用指定具有弱读/写顺序的回写高速缓存的缓存特性的MM-IO-VBUF标签来标记。 低级操作系统软件，如Windows NT TM操作系统的硬件抽象语言（HAL）接口或设备驱动程序软件，初始化存储器区域，高速缓存并在存储器区域和高速缓存之间进行符号关联。 根据存储器标签的操作进行操作的高速缓存允许用于执行各种类型的多媒体或信号处理操作的读取和写入操作，包括解压缩，绘图操作，压缩，混合等， 缓存多媒体绘图面。 用于执行多媒体或信号处理操作的数据或者已经位于I / O表面上，或者从处理器本地的另一个存储位置读取或从外部处理器读取，外部处理器也被缓存并标记为特殊缓存区域。 处理器执行作用于缓存数据的操作。 当处理器完全执行所有操作时，仅使用诸如CFLSH [MM-IO-VBUF]的刷新指令来刷新缓存的存储器区域。 刷新指令指示高速缓存写入并使具有指定标签的区域无效，这里是MM-IO-VBUF。