Buffered freepointer management memory system
US10901887B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | May 17, 2018 |
| Grant date | Jan 26, 2021 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Sep 13, 2038 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F13/1673
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A system and method of buffered freepointer management to handle burst traffic to fixed size structures in an external memory system. A circular queue stores implicitly linked free memory locations, along with an explicitly linked list in memory. The queue is updated at the head with newly released locations, and new locations from memory are added at the tail. When a freed location in the queue is reused, external memory need not be updated. When the queue is full, the system attempts to release some of the freepointers such as by dropping them if they are already linked, updating the linked list in memory only if those dropped are not already linked. Latency can be further reduced by loading new locations from memory when the queue is nearly empty, rather than waiting for empty condition, and by writing unlinked locations to memory when the queue is nearly full.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.