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:
Jul. 06, 2010
Filed:
Aug. 22, 2008
James Norris Dieffenderfer, Apex, NC (US);
Praveen G. Karandikar, Cary, NC (US);
Michael Bryan Mitchell, Fuquay-Varina, NC (US);
Thomas Philip Speier, Holly Springs, NC (US);
Paul Michael Steinmetz, Morrisville, NC (US);
James Norris Dieffenderfer, Apex, NC (US);
Praveen G. Karandikar, Cary, NC (US);
Michael Bryan Mitchell, Fuquay-Varina, NC (US);
Thomas Philip Speier, Holly Springs, NC (US);
Paul Michael Steinmetz, Morrisville, NC (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
Embodiments include a cache controller adapted to determine whether a memory line for which the processor is to issue an address-only kill request resides in a fill buffer for the cache line in a shared state. If so, the cache controller may mark the fill buffer as not having completed bus transactions and issue the address-only kill request for that fill buffer. The address-only kill request may transmit to other processors on the bus and the other processors may respond by invalidating the cache entries for the memory line. Upon confirmation from the other processors, a bus arbiter may confirm the kill request, promoting the memory line already in that fill buffer to exclusive state. Once promoted, the fill buffer may be marked as having completed the bus transactions and may be written into the cache.