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. 24, 2004
Filed:
Sep. 29, 2000
Peter C. Damron, Fremont, CA (US);
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
A system and method are provided for efficiently prefetching data in a pointer linked data structure ( ). In one embodiment, a data processing system ( ) is provided including a processor ( ) capable of executing a program, a main-memory ( ) and a prefetch engine ( ) configured to prefetch data from a plurality of locations in main-memory in response to a prefetch request from the processor. When the data in main-memory ( ) has a linked-data-structure having a number nodes ( ) each with data ( ) stored therein, prefetch engine ( ) is configured to traverse the linked-data-structure and prefetch data from the nodes. The prefetch engine ( ) is configured to determine from data contained in a prefetched first node ( A) and an offset value a new starting address for a second node ( B) to be prefetched. In one embodiment, the prefetch engine ( ) includes a number of sets of prefetch registers ( ), one set of prefetch registers for each prefetch request from processor ( ) that is yet to be completed. Each set of prefetch registers ( ) includes (i) a prefetch address register ( ); (ii) an offset register ( ); (iii) a termination register ( ); (iv) a status register ( ); and (v) a returned data register ( ).