Patent · US Expired

Method and apparatus for determining memory pages having greatest frequency of access in a non-uniform memory access computer system

US6035377A · kind A · utility

19Cited by
9References
4Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateDec 17, 1997
Grant dateMar 7, 2000
Priority date
Expiry dateDec 17, 2017

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F12/122
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A method implemented in hardware 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. Each processing node further includes page access counter search logic connected to the plurality of page access counters, which is enabled upon completion of page access monitoring, for sequentially comparing the contents of each page access counter with a predetermined minimum count value to identify the…

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