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.

Date of Patent:
Feb. 14, 2012

Filed:

May. 07, 2009
Applicants:

David F. Greenberg, Austin, TX (US);

Michael C. Alexander, Austin, TX (US);

Kathryn C. Stacer, Round Rock, TX (US);

Inventors:

David F. Greenberg, Austin, TX (US);

Michael C. Alexander, Austin, TX (US);

Kathryn C. Stacer, Round Rock, TX (US);

Assignee:
Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F 12/08 (2006.01);
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
Abstract

Each cacheline of a unified cache storing information is marked as incoherent if the information was acquired incoherently or marked as coherent if the information was acquired coherently. A subsequent incoherent read access to a cacheline can result in a cache hit and a return of the cached information regardless of whether the cacheline is marked as coherent or incoherent. However, a subsequent coherent read access to a cacheline marked as incoherent will be returned as a cache miss regardless of whether the cacheline includes information sought by the coherent read access. In response to a cache miss for a coherent read access, a global snoop is initiated so as to query all other target components within the same coherency domain. In contrast, a cache miss resulting from an incoherent read access is processed using a non-global snoop to a limited set of one or a few target components in the coherency domain.


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