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AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsYoanna Baumgartner, Gary Dale Carpenter, Mark Edward Dean, Anna Elman, James Stephen Fields, Jr., David Brian Glasco
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A non-uniform memory access (NUMA) computer system includes a plurality of processing nodes coupled to a node interconnect. The plurality of processing nodes include at least a remote processing node, which contains a processor having an associated cache hierarchy, and a home processing node. The home processing node includes a shared system memory containing a plurality of memory granules and a coherence directory that indicates possible coherence states of copies of memory granules among the plurality of memory granules that are stored within at least one processing node other than the home processing node. If the processor within the remote processing node has a reservation for a memory granule among the plurality of memory granules that is not resident within the associated cache hierarchy, the coherence directory associates the memory granule with a coherence state indicating that the reserved memory granule may possibly be held non-exclusively at the remote processing node. In this manner, the coherence mechanism can be utilized to manage processor reservations even in cases in which a reserving processor's cache hierarchy does not hold a copy of the reserved memory granule.
A method of reservation management in a multiprocessor computer system including a remote processing node and a home processing node coupled to said node interconnect, wherein said remote processing node includes a processor having an associated cache hierarchy and said home processing node includes a shared system memory containing a plurality of memory granules and a coherence directory that indicates possible coherence states of remote copies of said plurality of mimory granules, said method comprising:
A computer system, comprising:
A home processing node for a multi-node computer system containing a remote processing node including a processor having an associated cache hierarchy, said home processing node comprising:
A remote processing node for a multi-node computer system, wherein said multi-node computer system contains a home processing node including a shared system memory containing a plurality of memory granules and a coherence directory that indicates possible coherence states of copies of memory granules that are stored within at least one processing node other than said home processing node, said remote processing node comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.