Reducing over-purging of structures associated with address translation using an array of tags
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsJonathan D. Bradbury, Christian Jacobi, Anthony Saporito
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A marking capability is used to provide an indication of whether a block of memory is being used by a guest control program to back an address translation structure. The marking capability includes setting an indicator in one or more locations associated with the block of memory. In a further aspect, the marking capability includes a purging capability that limits the purging of translation look-aside buffers and other such structures based on the marking.
Claims20
A computer program product for facilitating purging of structure entries associated with address translation, said computer program product comprising:
- a computer readable storage medium readable by a processing circuit and storing instructions for execution by the processing circuit for performing a method comprising:
- determining, by a processor, whether a block of memory assigned to a guest program managed by a host virtual machine manager and for which a purge request has been received is backing an address translation structure, the block of memory having an address to identify the block of memory;
- and
- based on determining the block of memory is not backing the address translation structure:
- selecting a particular counter for the block of memory based on a selected portion of the address;
- incrementing a value of the particular counter to be used to selectively purge from a structure associated with address translation a subset of address translation entries, wherein the structure comprises one or more levels, and wherein the subset of address translation entries is one subset of a plurality of subsets of address translation entries in one level of the one or more levels;
- and
- selectively purging from the structure associated with address translation the subset of address translation entries, based on the incrementing the value.
A computer system for facilitating purging of structure entries associated with address translation, said computer system comprising:
- a memory;
- and
- a processor in communication with the memory, wherein the computer system is configured to perform a method, said method comprising:
- determining, by the processor, whether a block of memory assigned to a guest program managed by a host virtual machine manager and for which a purge request has been received is backing an address translation structure, the block of memory having an address to identify the block of memory;
- and
- based on determining the block of memory is not backing the address translation structure:
- selecting a particular counter for the block of memory based on a selected portion of the address;
- incrementing a value of the particular counter to be used to selectively purge from a structure associated with address translation a subset of address translation entries, wherein the structure comprises one or more levels, and wherein the subset of address translation entries is one subset of a plurality of subsets of address translation entries in one level of the one or more levels;
- and
- selectively purging from the structure associated with address translation the subset of address translation entries, based on the incrementing the value.
A computer-implemented method of facilitating purging of structure entries associated with address translation, said computer-implemented method comprising:
- determining, by a processor, whether a block of memory assigned to a guest program managed by a host virtual machine manager and for which a purge request has been received is backing an address translation structure, the block of memory having an address to identify the block of memory;
- and
- based on determining the block of memory is not backing the address translation structure:
- selecting a particular counter for the block of memory based on a selected portion of the address;
- incrementing a value of the particular counter to be used to selectively purge from a structure associated with address translation a subset of address translation entries, wherein the structure comprises one or more levels, and wherein the subset of address translation entries is one subset of a plurality of subsets of address translation entries in one level of the one or more levels;
- and
- selectively purging from the structure associated with address translation the subset of address translation entries, based on the incrementing the value.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.