Speculative reads in buffered memory
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsBrian S. Morris, Bill Nale, Robert G. Blankenship, Yen-Cheng Liu
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A speculative read request is received from a host device over a buffered memory access link for data associated with a particular address. A read request is sent for the data to a memory device. The data is received from the memory device in response to the read request and the received data is sent to the host device as a response to a demand read request received subsequent to the speculative read request.
Claims20
An apparatus comprising:
- host logic to:
- perform a cache lookup for data associated with a particular memory address;
- send a speculative read request to a buffer device in conjunction with the cache lookup, wherein the speculative read request is to cause the buffer device to obtain the data from memory;
- and
- determine whether to send a read request to the buffer device to cause the buffer chip to return the data from memory based at least in part on a result of the cache lookup.
An apparatus comprising:
- a memory controller to:
- receive, from a host device over a buffered memory access link, a speculative read request for data associated with a particular address;
- send a read request for the data to a memory device;
- receive the data from the memory device in response to the read request;
- and
- send the data to the host device in response to a demand read request subsequent to the speculative read request.
At least one machine accessible storage medium having code stored thereon, the code when executed on a machine, causes the machine to:
- determine whether to send a speculative read request in association with a particular lookup of last level cache, wherein the particular lookup comprises a lookup for data associated with a particular memory address;
- perform the particular lookup of the last level cache;
- send a speculative read request to a buffer device in conjunction with the particular lookup, wherein the speculative read request is to cause the buffer chip to obtain the data from memory at least partially in parallel with the particular lookup;
- and
- send a demand read request to the buffer device to cause the buffer chip to return the data from memory on a miss result for the particular lookup.
A system comprising:
- a buffer chip;
- memory to be accessed by through the buffer chip;
- a processor block coupled to the buffer chip by a memory access link, wherein the processor block comprises:
- one or more processor cores;
- last level cache;
- a host controller to:
- perform a lookup of the last level cache for data associated with a particular address of the memory;
- send a speculative read request to the buffer chip in conjunction with the lookup, wherein the speculative read request is to cause the buffer device to obtain the data from the memory;
- and
- determine whether to send a read request to the buffer chip to cause the buffer chip to return the data from memory based at least in part on a result of the cache lookup.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.