Operation of a dual instruction pipe virus co-processor

A method of virus processing content objects, the method comprising:

• a step for storing, by a general purpose processor, a content object that is to be virus processed to a system memory of the general purpose processor using a virtual address, the system memory having stored therein a page directory containing information for translating virtual addresses to physical addresses within a physical address space of the system memory;
• a step for caching, by a virus co-processor, coupled to the general purpose processor via an interconnect bus, a plurality of most recently used entries of the page directory within one or more translation lookaside buffers implemented within an on-chip cache of the virus co-processor;
• a step for reading, by the virus co-processor, a subset of instructions from a virus signature memory of the virus co-processor, the subset of instructions containing op-codes of a first instruction type and op-codes of a second instruction type;
• a step for assigning, by the virus co-processor, instructions of the subset of instructions of the first instruction type to a first instruction pipe of a plurality of instruction pipes of the virus co-processor for execution;
• and
• a step for executing, by the first instruction pipe, an instruction of the instructions assigned to the first instruction pipe including accessing a portion of the content object from the system memory by performing direct virtual memory addressing of the system memory using a physical address derived based on the virtual address and the one or more translation lookaside buffers and comparing the portion of the content object against a string associated with the instruction.