Indirect memory fetcher

US10684858B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• Intel Corporation · US

Inventors

• Stijn Eyerman · Evergem, BE
• Wim Heirman · Evergem, BE
• Kristof Du Bois · Brüggen, DE
• Ibrahim Hur · Portland, US
• Joshua B. Fryman · Corvallis, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Jun 1, 2018
• Grant date: Jun 16, 2020
• Expiry date: Aug 15, 2038

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G06F9/3818
• WIPO field: Computer technology
• WIPO sector: Electrical engineering

Abstract

Disclosed embodiments relate to an indirect memory fetch (IMF) unit. In one example, an apparatus includes circuitry to fetch and decode an instruction specifying a sparse operand array including N operands, and an index array including N contiguously-addressed indices. The apparatus further includes a processing engine associated with an IMF unit to respond to the decoded instruction by initializing the IMF unit to fetch the N operands in order, probing the IMF unit to determine that a fetched operand is ready to retrieve, retrieving the fetched operand from the IMF unit, and repeating the probing and retrieving until all N operands have been retrieved. The IMF unit, independent of the processing engine, is to fetch the N contiguously-addressed indices from the index array, use the N fetched indices to calculate memory addresses for the N operands, and issue a plurality of read requests to fetch the N operands in order.