Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Michael Raam

Kamran Malik

Takeki Osanai

Rakesh Agarwal

Masashi Sasahara

Toru Utsumi

A microprocessor includes an MMU which converts from a virtual address to a physical address, and an LSU which controls an execution of a load/store instruction. The LSU includes a DCACHE which temporarily stores data to read out from and to write into an external memory, an SPRAM used for a specific purpose besides caching, and an address generator which generates the virtual address to access the DCACHE and the SPRAM. The MMU generates a conversion table which performs a conversion from the virtual address to the physical address. A flag information showing whether or not the access to the SPRAM is performed is included in this conversion table. The LSU absolutely accesses the SPRAM if the flag is being set. Accordingly, it is unnecessary to allocate the SPRAM to a memory map of the main memory, and the allocation of the memory map simplifies.

Microprocessor with virtual-to-physical address translation using flags

The present invention comprises a LSU which executes instructions relating to load/store. The LSU includes a DCACHE which temporarily stores data read from and written to the external memory, an SPRAM used to specific purposes other than cache, and an address generator generating virtual addresses for access to the DCACHE and the SPRAM. Because the SPRAM can load and store data by a pipeline of the LSU and exchanges data with an external memory through a DMA transfer, the present invention is especially available to high-speedily process a large amount of data such as the image data. Because the LSU can access the SPRAM with the same latency as that of the DCACHE, after data being stored in the external memory is transferred to the SPRAM, the processor can access the SPRAM in order to perform data process, and it is possible to process a large amount of data with shorter time than time necessary to directly access an external memory.

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Cupertino, CA, United States of America

Michael Raam