Hybrid cache having physical-cache and virtual-cache characteristics and

Abstract

A cache memory system includes a primary cache characterized by a virtual index and physical tags, and a secondary cache characterized by a physical index and physical tag. Thus, the cache system forms a hybrid of physical-cache and virtual-cache characteristics. Further, the secondary cache includes a primary index segment for each line of secondary cache. The primary index segment corresponds to a portion of the virtual address for the contents stored at the respective secondary-cache line. Further, primary cache is maintained as a subset of secondary cache. To maintain the primary cache in such a way, the primary index segment is used to generate an index into primary cache to identify each potential primary-cache block which may be a subset of a secondary-cache block to be changed. When a secondary-cache block is to be invalidated, flushed or overwritten, the corresponding primary-cache blocks are identified and invalidated. The primary index segment also serves as a virtual tag for assuring that at any given time primary cache stores no more than one valid block corresponding to the same physical locations. When a secondary-cache hit occurs in response to a secondary-cache physical tag check, the primary index segment is compared to a portion of the virtual address. If the segment does not match, then primary cache may already have a word stored which corresponds to the desired physical location. As a result, the corresponding block in primary cache is invalidated and the primary index segment in secondary cache is changed to the current virtual address segment.