Method and apparatus for an efficient TLB lookup
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsMichael Johannes Jaspers, Markus Kaltenbach, Girish G. Kurup, Ulrich Mayer
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The present disclosure relates to a method of operating a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) arrangement for a processor supporting virtual addressing, wherein multiple translation engines are used to perform translations on request of one of a plurality of dedicated processor units. The method comprises: maintaining by a cache unit a dependency matrix for the engines to track for each processing unit if an engine is assigned to the each processing unit for a table walk. The cache unit may block a processing unit from allocating an engine to a translation request when the engine is already assigned to the processing unit in the dependency matrix.
Claims12
A method of operating a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) arrangement for a processor supporting virtual addressing, wherein multiple translation engines are used to perform translations on request of one of a plurality of dedicated processor units, the method comprising:
- maintaining by a cache unit a dependency matrix for the multiple translation engines to track for each processing unit if an engine of the multiple translation engines is assigned to each processing unit for a table walk;
- blocking by the cache unit a processing unit from allocating an engine from the multiple translation engines to a translation request when that engine is already assigned to a processing unit in the dependency matrix;
- updating the dependency matrix upon receiving one of:
- an indication of the engine being assigned the processing unit;
- and
- receiving a restart signal from the processing unit indicating that the engine is not busy.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.