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:
Oct. 14, 2014
Filed:
Dec. 19, 2008
David B. Glasco, Austin, TX (US);
Cass W. Everitt, Heath, TX (US);
David Kirk Mcallister, Holladay, UT (US);
Emmett M. Kilgariff, San Jose, CA (US);
George R. Lynch, Raleigh, NC (US);
James Roberts, Austin, TX (US);
Karan Mehra, Cary, NC (US);
Patrick R. Marchand, Apex, NC (US);
Peter B. Holmqvist, Cary, NC (US);
Steven E. Molnar, Chapel Hill, NC (US);
David B. Glasco, Austin, TX (US);
Cass W. Everitt, Heath, TX (US);
David Kirk Mcallister, Holladay, UT (US);
Emmett M. Kilgariff, San Jose, CA (US);
George R. Lynch, Raleigh, NC (US);
James Roberts, Austin, TX (US);
Karan Mehra, Cary, NC (US);
Patrick R. Marchand, Apex, NC (US);
Peter B. Holmqvist, Cary, NC (US);
Steven E. Molnar, Chapel Hill, NC (US);
NVIDIA Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
One embodiment of the present invention sets forth a compression status cache configured to store compression information for blocks of memory stored within an external memory. A data cache unit is configured to request, in response to a cache miss, compressed data from the external memory based on compression information stored in the compression status bit cache. The compression status for active buffers is dynamically swapped into the compression status cache as needed. Different compression formats may be specified for one or more tiles within an active buffer. One advantage of the disclosed compression status cache is that a lame amount of attached memory may be allocated as compressible memory blocks, without incurring a corresponding die area cost because a portion of the compression status stored off chip in attached memory is cached in the compression status cache.