System and method of exclusive memory access among multiple processing devices

Abstract

A processing system including processing cores, a shared memory, a shift table that stores a maximum number of reservations to locations in the memory, and an exclusive monitor that uses the shift table and an eviction policy to enforce core synchronization. The eviction policy is based on priority, age of valid reservations, shift table fullness state, and reservation memory conflict. The shift table may include a memory address and a size value indicative of a flexible amount of reserved memory at the memory address. The exclusive monitor evicts an oldest reservation in the shift table having a same or lower priority level as the new reservation. The exclusive monitor rejects the new reservation when the shift table is full of higher priority reservations. Reservations are shifted to maintain age status. Stale reservations may be invalidated or have their priority lowered. Conflicting reservations may be made with the same priority level.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.