Qualcomm Incorporated

Nieyan Geng

Gurvinder Singh Chhabra

Richard Senior

Andres Alejandro Oportus Valenzuela

Raghuveer Raghavendra

Anand Janakiraman

Christopher E Koob

Christopher Porter

Chuguang He

Francesco Grilli

Thomas Klingenbrunn

Shyamal Ramachandran

Amin Ansari

Richard Alan Stewart

Uttam Pattanayak

Maksim Krasnyanskiy

Samir Thakkar

Christopher Ahn

Caoye Shen

Unni Prasad

Sundeep Kushwaha

Chenyang Liu

Harsha Gordhan Jagasia

A method of managing a stack includes detecting, by a stack manager of a processor, that a size of a frame to be allocated exceeds available space of a first stack. The first stack is used by a particular task executing at the processor. The method also includes designating a second stack for use by the particular task. The method further includes copying metadata associated with the first stack to the second stack. The metadata enables the stack manager to transition from the second stack to the first stack upon detection that the second stack is no longer in use by the particular task. The method also includes allocating the frame in the second stack.

Stack management

Embodiments of the present disclosure include systems and methods for efficient over-the-air updating of firmware having compressed and uncompressed segments. The method includes receiving a first update to the firmware via a radio, wherein the first update includes a first uncompressed segment and a first compressed segment, receiving a second update to the firmware, wherein the second update corresponds to the first compressed segment, compressing the second update to generate a compressed second update, applying the first update to the firmware, and applying the compressed second update to the firmware to generate an updated firmware.

Over-the-air (OTA) updating of partially compressed firmware

Various embodiments include methods and devices for implementing external paging and swapping for dynamic modules on a computing device. Embodiments may include assigning static virtual addresses to a base image and dynamic modules of a static image of firmware of the computing device from a virtual address space for the static image, decompose static image into the base image and the dynamic modules, load the base image to an execution memory during a boot time from first partition of a storage memory, reserve a swap pool in the execution memory during the boot time, and load a dynamic module of the dynamic modules to the swap pool from a second partition of storage memory during a run time.

External paging and swapping for dynamic modules

In an aspect, high priority lines are stored starting at an address aligned to a cache line size for instance 64 bytes, and low priority lines are stored in memory space left by the compression of high priority lines. The space left by the high priority lines and hence the low priority lines themselves are managed through pointers also stored in memory. In this manner, low priority lines contents can be moved to different memory locations as needed. The efficiency of higher priority compressed memory accesses is improved by removing the need for indirection otherwise required to find and access compressed memory lines, this is especially advantageous for immutable compressed contents. The use of pointers for low priority is advantageous due to the full flexibility of placement, especially for mutable compressed contents that may need movement within memory for instance as it changes in size over time.

Priority-based storage and access of compressed memory lines in memory in a processor-based system

Reducing bandwidth consumption when performing free memory list cache maintenance in compressed memory schemes of processor-based systems is disclosed. In this regard, a memory system including a compression circuit is provided. The compression circuit includes a compress circuit that is configured to cache free memory lists using free memory list caches comprising a plurality of buffers. When a number of pointers cached within the free memory list cache falls below a low threshold value, an empty buffer of the plurality of buffers is refilled from a system memory. In some aspects, when a number of pointers of the free memory list cache exceeds a high threshold value, a full buffer of the free memory list cache is emptied to the system memory. In this manner, memory access operations for emptying and refilling the free memory list cache may be minimized.

Reducing bandwidth consumption when performing free memory list cache maintenance in compressed memory schemes of processor-based systems

Reducing metadata size in compressed memory systems of processor-based systems is disclosed. In one aspect, a compressed memory system provides 2compressed data regions, corresponding 2sets of free memory lists, and a metadata circuit. The metadata circuit associates virtual addresses with abbreviated physical addresses, which omit N upper bits of corresponding full physical addresses, of memory blocks of the 2compressed data regions. A compression circuit of the compressed memory system receives a memory access request including a virtual address, and selects one of the 2compressed data regions and one of the 2sets of free memory lists based on a modulus of the virtual address and 2. The compression circuit retrieves an abbreviated physical address corresponding to the virtual address from the metadata circuit, and performs a memory access operation on a memory block associated with the abbreviated physical address in the selected compressed data region.

Reducing metadata size in compressed memory systems of processor-based systems

Aspects disclosed involve reducing or avoiding buffering of evicted cache data from an uncompressed cache memory in a compression memory system when stalled write operations occur. A processor-based system is provided that includes a cache memory and a compression memory system. When a cache entry is evicted from the cache memory, cache data and a virtual address associated with the evicted cache entry are provided to the compression memory system. The compression memory system reads metadata associated with the virtual address of the evicted cache entry to determine the physical address in the compression memory system mapped to the evicted cache entry. If the metadata is not available, the compression memory system stores the evicted cache data at a new, available physical address in the compression memory system without waiting for the metadata. Thus, buffering of the evicted cache data to avoid or reduce stalling write operations is not necessary.

Reducing or avoiding buffering of evicted cache data from an uncompressed cache memory in a compression memory system when stalled write operations occur

Aspects disclosed relate to a priority-based access of compressed memory lines in a processor-based system. In an aspect, a memory access device in the processor-based system receives a read access request for memory. If the read access request is higher priority, the memory access device uses the logical memory address of the read access request as the physical memory address to access the compressed memory line. However, if the read access request is lower priority, the memory access device translates the logical memory address of the read access request into one or more physical memory addresses in memory space left by the compression of higher priority lines. In this manner, the efficiency of higher priority compressed memory accesses is improved by removing a level of indirection otherwise required to find and access compressed memory lines.

Priority-based access of compressed memory lines in memory in a processor-based system

Aspects include computing devices, systems, and methods for implementing executing decompression of a compressed page. A computing device may determine a decompression block belonging to a compressed page that contains a code instruction requested in a memory access request. Decompression blocks, other than the decompression block containing the requested code instruction, may be selected for decompression based on their locality with respect to the decompression block containing the requested code instruction. Decompression blocks not identified for decompression may be substituted for a fault or exception code. The computing device may decompress decompression blocks identified for decompression, terminating the decompression of the compressed page upon filling all blocks with decompressed blocks, faults, or exception code. The remaining decompression blocks belonging to the compressed page may be decompressed after or concurrently with the execution of the requested code instruction.

Efficient decompression locality system for demand paging

Methods and apparatus are provided for device configuration (e.g., feature segment loading and system selection). Certain aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to operating a user equipment (UE) in a first radio access network (RAN) with a first set of modem features that supports the first RAN, detecting a second RAN not supported by the first set of modem features, and rebooting the modem software to load a second set of modem features that supports the detected RAN. For certain aspects, the first RAN may be a Time Division-Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access (TD-SCDMA) network and the second RAN may be a Wideband-Code Division Multiple Access (W-CDMA) network or long term evolution network. This allows features to be loaded into memory (e.g., only) when they are required to support a detected RAN, rather than loading an entire image, thereby conserving DRAM and increasing efficiency.

Methods and apparatus for updating a device configuration

Aspects include computing devices, systems, and methods for implementing executing decompression of a compressed page. A computing device may determine a decompression block of a compressed page that contains a code instruction requested in a memory access request. Decompression blocks, other than the decompression block containing the requested code instruction, may be selected for decompression based on being situated between an end of the compressed page and the decompression block containing the requested code instruction. Decompression blocks not identified for decompression may be substituted for a fault or exception code. The computing device may decompress decompression blocks identified for decompression, starting at the end of the compressed page and terminating the decompression of the compressed page upon filling all blocks with decompressed blocks, faults, or exception code. The remaining decompression blocks of the compressed page may be decompressed after or concurrently with the execution of the requested code instruction.

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San Diego, CA, United States of America

Nieyan Geng