Predictive early write-back of owned cache blocks in a shared memory computer system
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsGeorge Chrysos, Matthew Mattina
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method for predicting early write back of owned cache blocks in a shared memory computer system. This invention enables the system to predict which written blocks may be more likely to be requested by another CPU and the owning CPU will write those blocks back to memory as soon as possible after updating the data in the block. If another processor is requesting the data, this can reduce the latency to get that data, reducing synchronization overhead, and increasing the throughput of parallel programs.
Claims27
A method comprising:
- requesting a block by a first processor;
- determining if a second processor has the requested block;
- transferring block to the first processor if the second processor does not have the requested block;
- and
- immediately writing updated block to a memory by the first processor.
A first and second processors comprising:
- a shared cache coupled to the first and second processors, wherein the shared cache determines ownership of a block of data;
- a buffer located within each of the first and second processor, wherein the buffer stores most recent data for the block;
- and
- wherein the first processor requests the block, if the block is shared by the second processor, the first processor obtains the block, updates the block and immediately writes the updated block to the shared cache.
A multiprocessor computer system comprising a plurality of nodes, each node from said plurality of nodes comprising:
- a router to communicate with the plurality of nodes in the multiprocessor system;
- at least first and second processors, wherein the first and second processor comprising:
- a shared cache coupled to the first and second processors, wherein the shared cache determines ownership of a block of data,
- a buffer located within each of the first and second processor, wherein the buffer stores most recent data for the block, and
- wherein the first processor requests the block, if the block is shared by the second processor, the first processor obtains the block, updates the block and immediately writes the updated block to the shared cache,
- a first interface to input/output devices;
- and
- an audio input/output device coupled to the first interface.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.