US 8,135,926 B1 · Cache-based control of atomic operations in conjunction with an external ALU block

Abstract

One embodiment of the invention sets forth a mechanism for efficiently processing atomic operations transmitted from multiple general processing clusters to an L2 cache. A tag look-up unit tracks the availability of each cache line in the L2 cache, reserves the necessary cache lines for the atomic operations and transmits the atomic operations to an ALU for processing. The tag look-up unit also increments a reference counter associated with a reserved cache line each time an atomic operation associated with that cache line is received. This feature allows multiple atomic operations associated with the same cache line to be pipelined to the ALU. A ROP unit that includes the ALU may request additional data necessary to process an atomic operation from the L2 cache. Result data is stored in the L2 cache and may also be returned to the general processing clusters.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A method for processing an atomic operation transmitted from an intermediate cache coupled to one or more clients and to an external memory, the method comprising:

receiving an atomic command and an atomic data payload from the intermediate cache;
storing the atomic data payload in a first buffer;
storing the atomic command in a command buffer;
determining whether a second portion of data necessary to process the atomic command is available in a local cache unit;
upon obtaining the second portion of data, transmitting the atomic command, the atomic data payload and the second portion of data to an arithmetic logic unit for processing;
and
transmitting result data associated with the processed atomic command to the intermediate cache.

4 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Cache-based control of atomic operations in conjunction with an external ALU block

Life of this patent

Cache-based control of atomic operations in conjunction with an external ALU block

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims20