Patent · US Expired

Method and apparatus for determining memory page access information in a non-uniform memory access computer system

US6026472A · kind A · utility

19Cited by
12References
8Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateJun 24, 1997
Grant dateFeb 15, 2000
Priority date
Expiry dateJun 24, 2017

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F2212/2542
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A hardware method to concurrently obtain memory access locality information for a large number of contiguous sections of system memory (pages) for the purposes of optimizing memory and process assignments in a multiple-node NUMA architecture computer system including a distributed system memory. Page access monitoring logic is included within each processing node which contains a portion of shared system memory. This page access monitoring logic maintains a plurality of page access counters, each page access counter corresponding to a different memory page address within the shared system memory. Whenever the processing node generates a transaction requiring access to a memory address within system memory, the page access monitoring logic increments a count value contained within the page access counter corresponding to the memory address to which access is sought. Thus, a record of memory access patterns is created which can be used to optimize memory and process assignments in the computer system.

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