The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Feb. 18, 2020
Filed:
May. 30, 2017
Applicant:
Microsoft Technology Licensing, Llc, Redmond, WA (US);
Inventors:
Patrick P. Lai, Fremont, CA (US);
Robert Allen Shearer, Woodinville, WA (US);
Assignee:
MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING, LLC, Redmond, WA (US);
Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Assistant Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F 12/08 (2016.01); G06F 12/0895 (2016.01);
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F 12/0895 (2013.01); G06F 2212/1016 (2013.01); G06F 2212/6032 (2013.04); G06F 2212/6082 (2013.01);
Abstract
The lookup of accesses (including snoops) to cache tag ways is serialized to perform one (or less than all) tag way access per clock (or even slower). Thus, for a N-way set associative cache, instead of performing lookup/comparison on the N tag ways in parallel, the lookups are performed one tag way a time. Way prediction is utilized to select an order to look in the N ways. This can include selecting which tag way will be looked in first. This helps to reduce the average number of cycles and lookups required.