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:
Sep. 12, 2000
Filed:
Dec. 19, 1997
Jonathan H Shiell, Plano, TX (US);
James O Bondi, Plano, TX (US);
Texas Instruments Incorporated, Dallas, TX (US);
Abstract
A microprocessor (10) and corresponding system (300) is disclosed in which prefetch of instruction or data from higher level memory (11; 307; 305) may be performed in combination with a fetch from a lower level cache (16). A branch target buffer (56) has a plurality of entries (63) associated with branching instructions; in addition to the tag field (TAG) and target field (TARGET), each entry (63) includes prefetch fields (PF0 ADDR; PF1 ADDR) containing the addresses of memory prefetches that are to be performed in combination with the fetch of the branch target address. Graduation queue and tag check circuitry (27) is provided to update the contents of the prefetch fields (PF0 ADDR; PF1 ADDR) by interrogating instructions that are executed following the associated branching instruction to detect instructions that involve cache misses, in particular the target of the next later branching instruction.