International Business Machines Corporation

Charles Embrey Carmack, Jr

James Wilson Bishop

Gregory Robert Klouda

Stefan P Jackowski

Robert D Siegl

Devon D Snyder

Timothy Jude O'Keefe

Diane Elaine Olson

Marcia Lynn Brandt

Joseph Vincent DiCecco

Jason Robert Hansen

Patrick W Gallagher

Thomas Michael Moskalik

Patrick Wayne Gallagher

The present invention provides a system and method of workstation configuration that includes a multi-level hierarchy management of preferences which are essentially managed and stored with a file server, rather than with each individual workstation. The invention comprises a computer network that includes workstations that have configurable hardware devices and software applications; a workstation server connected to the workstations that includes hierarchical preference files containing configuration information; and a preference manager for providing a coalesced, or merged, set of configuration parameters to the workstations based on the information in the hierarchical preference files.

Hierarchy of preferences and preference groups

A hierarchical cache system comprises first and second pluralities of data caches and first and second respective higher level caches. The first higher level cache is coupled to the first plurality of caches and stores data of the first plurality of caches. The second higher level cache is coupled to the second plurality of caches and stores data of the second plurality of caches. First and second storage controllers access first and second respective address ranges from a main memory and the higher level cache subsystems. The first higher level cache responds to a request for data not contained in the first higher level cache by determining which of the address ranges encompasses the requested data and forwarding the request to the storage controller which can access the determined address range. The second higher level cache responds to a request for data not contained in the second higher level cache by determining which of the address ranges encompasses the requested data and forwarding the request to the storage controller which can access the determined address range.

Multi-level computer cache system providing plural cache controllers

A hierarchical cache system comprises a plurality of first level cache subsystems for storing data or instructions of respective CPUs, a higher level cache subsystem containing data or instructions of the plurality of cache subsystems, and a main memory coupled to the higher level cache subsystem. A page mover is coupled to the higher level cache subsystem and main memory, and responds to a request from one of the CPUs to store data into the main memory, by storing the data into the main memory without copying previous contents of a store-to address of the request to the higher level cache subsystem in response to said request. Also, the page mover invalidates the previous contents in the higher level cache subsystem if already resident there when the CPU made the request. A buffering system within the page mover comprises request buffers and data segment buffers to store a segment of predetermined size of the data. When all of the request buffers have like priority and there are fewer request buffers that contain respective, outstanding requests than the number of data segment buffers, the page mover means allocates to the request buffers with outstanding requests use of the data segment buffers for which there are no outstanding requests.

Hierarchical computer cache system

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Rochester, MN, United States of America

Charles Embrey Carmack, Jr