Intel Corporation

Zainulabedin J Aurangabadwala

Krishna N Vinod

A processor includes a processing core, a L1 cache comprising a first processing core and a first L1 cache comprising a first L1 cache data entry of a plurality of L1 cache data entries to store data. The processor also includes an L2 cache comprising a first L2 cache data entry of a plurality of L2 cache data entries. The first L2 cache data entry corresponds to the first L1 cache data entry and each of the plurality of L2 cache data entries are associated with a corresponding presence bit (pbit) of a plurality of pbits. Each of the plurality of pbits indicates a status of a corresponding one of the plurality of L2 cache data entries. The processor also includes a cache controller, which in response to a first request among a plurality of requests to access the data at the first L1 cache data entry, determines that a copy of the data is stored in the first L2 cache data entry; and retrieves the copy of the data from the L2 cache data entry in view of the status of the pbit.

Minimizing snoop traffic locally and across cores on a chip multi-core fabric

A processor includes a processing core, an L1 cache, operatively coupled to the processing core, the L1 cache comprising an L1 cache entry to store a data item, an L2 cache, inclusive with respect to the L1 cache, the L2 cache comprising an L2 cache entry corresponding to the L1 cache entry, an activity flag associated with the L2 cache entry, the activity flag indicating an activity status of the L1 cache entry, and a cache controller to, in response to detecting an access operation with respect to the L1 cache entry, set the flag to an active status.

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Fremont, CA, United States of America

Zainulabedin J Aurangabadwala