Greg Williams

Title: Greg Williams and Cache-Processing Innovations

Introduction

Greg Williams is an inventor associated with Sun Microsystems, Inc., in Palo Alto, California. His work focuses on processor cache systems and methods for handling load instructions efficiently. Williams is credited with 3 patents.

Latest Patents

Williams’s listed patent work includes “Hit bit for indicating whether load buffer entries will hit a cache when” and “Methods and apparatuses for servicing load instructions.” These inventions address how a processor manages load instructions while cache data and tag information are accessed.

The described methods use a load buffer to queue load instructions and track whether each instruction is expected to hit the cache. A hit bit can be calculated after a load has waited for older loads to be processed, helping the system manage delayed cache operations without repeatedly accessing the tag array.

The inventions also describe decoupling access to a cache’s data array from access to its tag array. This can allow a delayed load to access the data array later without rechecking the tags. Another described approach enables first-level and second-level cache accesses to occur simultaneously for two separate loads in the load buffer.

Career Highlights

At Sun Microsystems, Williams’s patent work addressed coordination between load buffers and cache structures. The techniques are designed to support concurrent cache operations and improve the handling of loads that are delayed or miss the cache.

Collaborations

Williams’s listed coworkers include Dale Robert Greenley and Ming Yeh. Their shared association with Sun Microsystems provides context for the engineering environment surrounding this work.

Conclusion

Greg Williams’s inventions focus on managing load instructions and coordinating cache access, with the goal of making processor memory operations more efficient.