Smart prefetching for remote memory

A non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions to be executed in a device that is connected to a processor executing an application program, wherein the instructions, when executed in the device, causes the device to carry out a method of prefetching pages from a remote memory, the method comprising:

• detecting that a cache-line access made by a processor executing an application program is an access to a cache line containing page table data of the application program;
• identifying data pages that are referenced by the page table data;
• initiating a fetch of a data page, which is one of the identified data pages, and starting a timer;
• and
• storing the data page in a local memory if the fetch completes prior to expiration of the timer, and setting a presence bit of the data page in the page table data to indicate that the data page is not present if the fetch does not complete prior to expiration of the timer.

A computer system for prefetching pages from a remote memory, the system comprising:

• a processor executing an application program;
• a local memory;
• and
• a cache-line access monitoring device connected to the processor, wherein the cache-line access monitoring device is configured to:
• detect that a cache-line access made by a processor executing an application program is an access to a cache line containing page table data of the application program;
• identify data pages that are referenced by the page table data;
• initiate a fetch of a data page, which is one of the identified data pages, and start a timer;
• and
• store the data page in the local memory if the fetch completes prior to expiration of the timer, and set a presence bit of the data page in the page table data to indicate that the data page is not present if the fetch does not complete prior to expiration of the timer.