International Business Machines Corporation

Ronald Nick Kalla

Balaram Sinharoy

John Wesley Ward, Iii

Michael Stephen Floyd

Richard William Doing

William John Starke

Jeffrey A Stuecheli

Edward John Silha

Minh Michelle Quy Pham

Ravi Kumar Arimilli

William Elton Burky

Stephen Joseph Schwinn

Luai A Abou-Emara

Jen-Yeu Chen

Guy L Guthrie

Michael Steven Siegel

William Joseph Armstrong

Jody B Joyner

William Eric Hall

Jentje Leenstra

Guerney D H Hunt

Larry Scott Leitner

Kenichi Tsuchiya

Paul Mackerras

Lakshminarayana Baba Arimilli

Richard James Eickemeyer

Hanhong Xue

Chulho Kim

Robert Sidney Blackmore

Cathy May

Charles David Wait

Shih-Hsiung Stephen Tung

Joachim Gerhard Clabes

Frederick Jacob Ziegler

Derek E Williams

James Norris Dieffenderfer

Hugh Shen

Ramakrishnan Rajamony

Bernard Charles Drerup

David S Levitan

Brian Mitchell Bass

William Evan Speight

Michael Raymond Trombley

Bruce Joseph Ronchetti

Gavin Balfour Meil

David Andrew Schroter

Michael Joseph Carnevale

Shmuel Ur

Todd Alan Venton

Benjamin Herrenschmidt

Stephen Douglas Weitzel

David W Cummings

Charles Porter Geer

Eric Jason Fluhr

Gary Paul McClannahan

Joaquin Hinojosa

David A Larson Stanton

Jake Truelove

Jeffrey W Kellington

Jack DiLullo

Naoko Pia Sanda

Jeffrey Mark Ritzinger

Jerome Martin Meyer

Minh Michelle Q Pham

A system, a method, and a computer program product for secure memory implementation for secure execution of virtual machines are provided. Data is processed in a first mode and a second mode, and commands are sent to a chip interconnect bus using real addresses, wherein the chip interconnect bus transports a number of bits for the real addresses. A memory controller is operatively coupled to a memory component. A secure memory range is specified by using range registers. If the real address is detected to be in the secure memory range to match a memory component address, a real address bit is set. If the real address is in the memory address hole, a security access violation is detected. If the real address is not in the secure address range and the real address bit is set, the security access violation is detected.

Secure memory implementation for secure execution of virtual machines

An apparatus for bypassing an invalidate search of a lookaside buffer includes a filter circuit that directs an invalidate command to a LPID/PID filter of an MMU of a processor and searches for an identifier targeted by the invalidate command. The MMU is external to cores of the processor. The apparatus includes an LPID/PID miss circuit that bypasses searching the lookaside buffer for addresses targeted by the invalidate command and returns a notification that the invalidate command did not identify the identifier targeted by the invalidate command in response to the filter circuit determining that the identifier targeted by the invalidate command is not stored in the LPID/PID filter.

Snoop invalidate filter for distributed memory management unit to reduce snoop invalidate latency

Reducing translation latency within a memory management unit (MMU) using external caching structures including requesting, by the MMU on a node, page table entry (PTE) data and coherent ownership of the PTE data from a page table in memory; receiving, by the MMU, the PTE data, a source flag, and an indication that the MMU has coherent ownership of the PTE data, wherein the source flag identifies a source location of the PTE data; performing a lateral cast out to a local high-level cache on the node in response to determining that the source flag indicates that the source location of the PTE data is external to the node; and directing at least one subsequent request for the PTE data to the local high-level cache.

Reducing translation latency within a memory management unit using external caching structures

A system, a method, and a computer program product for secure memory implementation for secure execution of virtual machines. Data is processed in a first mode and a second mode, and commands are sent to a chip interconnect bus using real addresses, wherein the chip interconnect bus transports a number of bits for the real addresses. A memory controller is operatively coupled to a memory component. A secure memory range is specified by using range registers. If the real address is detected to be in the secure memory range to match a memory component address, a real address bit is set. If the real address is in the memory address hole, a security access violation is detected. If the real address is not in the secure address range and the real address bit is set, the security access violation is detected.

Secure memory implementation for secure execution of Virtual Machines

An embodiment involves secure memory implementation for secure execution of virtual machines. Data is processed in a first mode and a second mode, and commands are sent to a chip interconnect bus using real addresses, wherein the chip interconnect bus includes a number of bits for the real addresses. A memory controller is operatively coupled to a memory component. A secure memory range is specified by using range registers. If the real address is detected to be in the secure memory range to match a memory component address, a real address bit is set. If the real address is in the memory address hole, a security access violation is detected. If the real address is not in the secure address range and the real address bit is set, the security access violation is detected.

Processor time accounting is enhanced by per-thread internal resource usage counter circuits that account for usage of processor core resources to the threads that use them. Relative resource use can be determined by detecting events such as instruction dispatches for multiple threads active within the processor, which may include idle threads that are still occupying processor resources. The values of the resource usage counters are used periodically to determine relative usage of the processor core by the multiple threads. If all of the events are for a single thread during a given period, the processor time is allocated to the single thread. If no events occur in the given period, then the processor time can be equally allocated among threads. If multiple threads are generating events, a fractional resource usage can be determined for each thread and the counters may be updated in accordance with their fractional usage.

Processor with resource usage counters for per-thread accounting

A system, method, and product are disclosed for testing multiple threads simultaneously. The threads share a real memory space. A first portion of the real memory space is designated as exclusive memory such that the first portion appears to be reserved for use by only one of the threads. The threads are simultaneously executed. The threads access the first portion during execution. Apparent exclusive use of the first portion of the real memory space is permitted by a first one of the threads. Simultaneously with permitting apparent exclusive use of the first portion by the first one of the threads, apparent exclusive use of the first portion of the real memory space is also permitted by a second one of the threads. The threads simultaneously appear to have exclusive use of the first portion and may simultaneously access the first portion.

Programming in a simultaneous multi-threaded processor environment

A method and a data processing system by which population count (popcount) operations are efficiently performed without incurring the latency and loss of critical processing cycles and bandwidth of real time processing. The method comprises: identifying data to be stored to memory for which a popcount may need to be determined; speculatively performing a popcount operation on the data as a background process of the processor while the data is being stored to memory; storing the data to a first memory location; and storing a value of the popcount generated by the popcount operation within a second memory location. The method further comprises: determining a size of data; determining a granular level at which the popcount operation on the data will be performed; and reserving a size of said second memory location that is sufficiently large to hold the value of the popcount.

Speculative popcount data creation

Programming in a simultaneous multi-threaded processor environment including permitting apparently exclusive access to multiple threads and disabling processor features during thread testing

A method performed in a data processing system initiates an asynchronous memory move (AMM) operation, whereby a processor performs a move of data in virtual address space from a first effective address to a second effective address and forwards parameters of the AMM operation to asynchronous memory mover logic for completion of the physical movement of data from a first memory location to a second memory location. The processor executes a second operation, which checks a status of the completion of the data move and returns a notification indicating the status. The notification indicates a status, which includes one of: data move in progress; data move totally done; data move partially done; data move cannot be performed; and occurrence of a translation look-aside buffer invalidate entry (TLBIE) operation. The processor initiates one or more actions in response to the notification received.

Reporting of partially performed memory move

Techniques are provided for determining consequences of an injected fault on a system running a given application program or operating system, in order to measure the software impact of a hardware soft error on the application program/operating system. The application program software is emulated instruction-by-instruction, where source operands are randomly modified before an instruction is executed, and destination operands are randomly modified after an instruction is executed, in order to mimic hardware soft errors. In addition, a program counter is randomly modified after execution of a branch instruction. The resulting consequences of such modifications are monitored such that a fault of an instruction being executed is modeled in order to determine a soft error rate (SER) for a software application program or operating system.

Testing soft error rate of an application program

A technique for triggering a system bus write command with user code includes identifying a specific store-type instruction in a user instruction sequence. The specific store-type instruction is converted into a specific request-type command, which is configured to include core permission controls (that are stored in core configuration registers of a processor core by a trusted kernel) and user created data (stored in a cache memory). Slave devices are configured through register space (that is only accessible by the trusted kernel) with respective slave permission controls. The specific request-type command is then transmitted from the cache memory, via a system bus. In this case, the slave devices that receive the specific request-type command process the specific request-type command when the core permission controls are the same as the respective slave permission controls. The trusted kernel may be included in a hypervisor or an operating system.

Processor system and methods of triggering a block move using a system bus write command initiated by user code

Processor core with per-thread resource usage accounting logic

Growing community of inventors

Round Rock, TX, United States of America

Ronald Nick Kalla