Data processing apparatus and method for reducing storage requirements for temporary storage of data

Abstract

An instruction cache stores cacheable instructions for access by a processing circuitry, the instruction cache having a data storage comprising a plurality of cache lines and a tag storage comprising a plurality of tag entries, each cache line for storing instruction data specifying a plurality of cacheable instructions, and each tag entry for storing an address identifier for the instruction data stored in an associated cache line. The instruction cache including valid flag storage for identifying whether each cache line is valid. Instruction cache control circuitry is arranged to store within a selected cache line of the data storage the instruction data for a plurality of cacheable instructions as retrieved from memory, to store within the tag entry associated with that selected cache line the address identifier for that stored instruction data, and to identify that selected cache line as valid within the valid flag storage.