Arm Limited

University of Michigan

Aasheesh Kolli

Ali Ghassan Saidi

Thomas Friedrich Wenisch

Stephan Diestelhorst

Peter Chen

An apparatus for processing data includes signature generation circuitryfor generating a signature value indicative of the current state of the apparatus in dependence upon a sequence of immediately preceding return addresses generating during execution of a stream of program instructions to reach that state of the apparatus. Prefetch circuitryperforms one or more prefetch operations in dependence upon the signature value that is generated. The signature value may be generated by a hashing operation (such as an XOR) performed upon return addresses stored within a return address stack

Prefetching based upon return addresses

A data processing systemincluding non-volatile memorymanages the ordering of writes to the non-volatile memory and persist barrier instructions using a persist buffer storing persist buffer data. A write controller responds to the persist buffer data to prevent writing to the non-volatile memory for instructions following a given persist barrier instruction within a sequence of program instructions before the writes to the non-volatile memory which precede that given persist barrier instruction have at least been acknowledged as received by the memory system containing the non-volatile memory. In the case of a multi-core system, cache snooping mechanisms are used to pass persistency dependence data between cores such that strong persist atomicity may be tracked and managed between the cores.

Growing community of inventors

Ann Arbor, MI, United States of America

Aasheesh Kolli