Predictive snooping of cache memory for master-initiated accesses
US5813036A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | May 6, 1997 |
| Grant date | Sep 22, 1998 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | May 6, 2017 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F12/0862
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
When a PCI-bus controller receives a request from a PCI-bus master to transfer data with an address in secondary memory, the controller performs an initial inquire cycle and withholds TRDY# to the PCI-bus master until any write-back cycle completes. The controller then allows the burst access to take place between secondary memory and the PCI-bus master, and simultaneously and predictively, performs an inquire cycle of the L1 cache for the next cache line. In this manner, if the PCI burst continues past the cache line boundary, the new inquire cycle will already have taken place, or will already be in progress, thereby allowing the burst to proceed with, at most, a short delay. Predictive snoop cycles are not performed if the first transfer of a PCI-bus master access would be the last transfer before a cache line boundary is reached.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.