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:
Aug. 01, 2000
Filed:
Nov. 17, 1995
Applicant:
Inventors:
Vernon Brethour, Owens Crossroads, AL (US);
Raymond A Heald, Los Altos, CA (US);
Assignee:
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Palo Alto, CA (US);
Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Assistant Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F / ;
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
711128 ; 711-3 ; 711144 ; 711137 ; 711201 ; 711213 ;
Abstract
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for efficiently outputting words from an N-way set-associative cache. In one embodiment, the cache tags contain information indicating which set contains a line holding data succeeding the last word in the line accessed during a cache read. For a cache which outputs M words for each access, when the addressed word is within M-1 words of the end of the line, the cache will output all the words from the accessed word to the end of the line and the remainder of the M words from a succeeding line in whatever set is indicated by the pointer.