Patent · US Expired

Method and system for maintaining translation lookaside buffer coherency in a multiprocessor data processing system

US5437017A · kind A · utility

73Cited by
7References
14Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateOct 9, 1992
Grant dateJul 25, 1995
Priority date
Expiry dateOct 9, 2012

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F2212/682
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

Translation lookaside buffers (TLB) are often utilized in the data processing system to efficiently translate an effective or virtual address to a real address within system memory. In systems which include multiple processors which may all access system memory, each processor may include a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) for translating effective addresses to real addresses and coherency between all translation lookaside buffers (TLB) must therefore be maintained. The method and system disclosed herein may be utilized to broadcast a unique bus structure in response to an execution of a translation lookaside buffer invalidate (TLBI) instruction by any processor within a multiprocessor system. The bus structure is accepted by other processors along the bus only in response to an absence of a pending translation lookaside buffer invalidate (TLBI) instruction within each processor. Thus, a broadcast translation lookaside buffer invalidate (TLBI) instruction may only be executed by the other processors within a multiprocessor system if it has been accepted by all processors within the system. After initiating execution of a translation lookaside buffer invalidate (TLBI) instruction …

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.