Mechanism for processing uncacheable streaming data
OwnerSrinivas Chennupaty, Jack Doweck +3inventors
InventorsSrinivas Chennupaty, Jack Doweck, Blaise Fanning, Prashant Sethi, Opher Kahn
Life of this patent
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Abstract
In one embodiment, a buffer is presented. The buffer comprises a type designator to designate that the buffer is a streaming read buffer, and a plurality of use designators to indicate whether data within the buffer has been used. The data within the buffer is an uncacheable memory type, such as Uncacheable Speculative Write Combining (USWC) memory. Furthermore, in some embodiments, the buffer is allocated upon execution of a streaming read buffer instruction. In other embodiments, the data within the buffer can only be used once and cannot be cached elsewhere in the processor.
Claims25
An apparatus, comprising:
- a buffer including
- a type designator to designate that the buffer is a streaming read buffer;
- and
- a plurality of use designators to indicate whether data within the buffer has been used,
- wherein the data within the buffer is an uncacheable memory type.
A method, comprising:
- allocating a buffer;
- issuing a cache-line-wide read request to a bus for an uncacheable memory type;
- placing data received from the bus into a register and into the buffer;
- setting a designator for the data placed in the register to indicate that the data was used;
- and
- placing the rest of the data from the cache-line-wide read request into the buffer.
A system, comprising:
- SDRAM;
- a media device connected to the SDRAM by a bus;
- and
- a processor connected to the SDRAM and the media device by the bus, and further comprising a buffer including
- a type designator to designate that the buffer is a streaming read buffer;
- and
- a plurality of use designators to indicate whether data within the buffer has been used,
- wherein the data within the buffer is an uncacheable memory type.
An article of manufacture comprising:
- a machine-accessible medium including data that, when accessed by a machine, cause the machine to perform operations comprising,
- allocating a buffer;
- issuing a cache-line-wide read request to a bus for an uncacheable memory type;
- placing data received from the bus into a register and into the buffer;
- setting a designator for the data placed in the register to indicate that the data was used;
- and
- placing the rest of the data from the cache-line-wide read request into the buffer.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.