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. 30, 2008
Filed:
Dec. 30, 2004
Paul J. Jordan, Austin, TX (US);
William J. Kucharski, Louisville, CO (US);
Roman M. Zajcew, La Mesa, CA (US);
Ashley N. Saulsbury, Los Gatos, CA (US);
Quinn A. Jacobson, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Paul J. Jordan, Austin, TX (US);
William J. Kucharski, Louisville, CO (US);
Roman M. Zajcew, La Mesa, CA (US);
Ashley N. Saulsbury, Los Gatos, CA (US);
Quinn A. Jacobson, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
The present invention provides a method and apparatus for increased efficiency for translation lookaside buffers by collapsing redundant translation table entries into a single translation table entry (TTE). In the present invention, each thread of a multithreaded processor is provided with multiple context registers. Each of these context registers is compared independently to the context of the TTE. If any of the contexts match (and the other match conditions are satisfied), then the translation is allowed to proceed. Two applications attempting to share one page but that still keep separate pages can then employ three total contexts. One context is for one application's private use; one of the contexts is for the other application's private use; and a third context is for the shared page. In one embodiment of the invention, two contexts are implemented per thread. However, the teachings of the present invention can be extended to a higher number of contexts per thread.