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:
Dec. 02, 2003
Filed:
May. 08, 1998
Applicant:
Inventors:
John H. Hughes, San Jose, CA (US);
Chris M. Thomson, Pleasanton, CA (US);
Assignee:
3Com Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F 1/200 ; G06F 1/328 ;
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F 1/200 ; G06F 1/328 ;
Abstract
The present invention provides a mechanism whereby caching operations, such as prefetch and copyback operations, can be initiated by an external direct memory access (DMA) controller. This allows the DMA controller to govern the inclusion as well as exclusion of data from a processor cache in such as way as to avoid unnecessary cache faults, and to thereby improve system performance. Thus, the present invention effectively provides a synchronization mechanism between an external DMA controller and a processor cache.