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:
Mar. 20, 2012
Filed:
Jan. 16, 2009
Jeffrey Powers Bradford, Rochester, MN (US);
Harold F. Kossman, Rochester, MN (US);
Timothy John Mullins, Rochester, MN (US);
Jeffrey Powers Bradford, Rochester, MN (US);
Harold F. Kossman, Rochester, MN (US);
Timothy John Mullins, Rochester, MN (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
An apparatus initiates, in connection with a context switch operation, a prefetch of data likely to be used by a thread prior to resuming execution of that thread. As a result, once it is known that a context switch will be performed to a particular thread, data may be prefetched on behalf of that thread so that when execution of the thread is resumed, more of the working state for the thread is likely to be cached, or at least in the process of being retrieved into cache memory, thus reducing cache-related performance penalties associated with context switching.