US 6,549,995 B1 · Compressor system memory organization and method for low latency access to uncompressed memory regions

Abstract

In a processing system having a main memory wherein information is stored in a compressed format for the purpose of gaining additional storage through compression efficiencies and, wherein information stored within the main memory is indirectly accessible by a processor through a compression and decompression mechanisms, an improved memory architecture that accommodates the necessary compressed information data structures, together with a memory region and mapping method for storing information that bypasses the compression and decompression mechanisms to provide low latency processor access to certain address spaces.

Claims19

Dependent claims

A memory management system for a computer implementing a processing device for enabling indirect storage and retrieval of compressed data in available address space in a physical memory system associated with said computer, said memory management system comprising:

a) a sectored memory region in said physical memory for exclusive storage of compressed data in fixed length storage sectors and having an associated sector translation lookup table (STT) including fixed length entries for mapping said real memory addresses to data storage locations within said physical memory;
b) an unsectored memory region in said physical memory for exclusively storing uncompressed data, said unsectored memory region comprising one or more unsectored memory subregions;
and,
c) compressed memory control system providing memory resource management for enabling said processing device to directly access said uncompressed data within said unsectored memory region without reference to said sector translation lookup table.

1 more element

In a computer processing system capable of performing read/write memory access to an associated fixed size physical memory system storing compressed data, a method for storing uncompressed data in and accessing uncompressed data from the physical memory comprising the steps of:

a) logically partitioning the fixed size physical memory into a sectored memory region for exclusive storage of storage compressed data in fixed length storage sectors, a sector translation lookup table (STT) including fixed length entries including addresses for mapping locations within said physical memory, and, an unsectored memory region for exclusively storing uncompressed information in one or more sub-regions thereof, and
b) in response to a processing system request for memory read/write access, comparing an address specified in said processor request with an address range corresponding to said partitioned unsectored memory region, and directly accessing said uncompressed information within said partitioned unsectored memory region without reference to said sector translation lookup table.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Compressor system memory organization and method for low latency access to uncompressed memory regions

Life of this patent

Compressor system memory organization and method for low latency access to uncompressed memory regions

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims19