Ensuring forward progress of token-required cache operations in a shared cache

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-8938588-B2
Application number	US-96961710-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 16, 2010
Priority date	Dec 16, 2010
Publication date	Jan 20, 2015
Grant date	Jan 20, 2015

Abstract

Ensuring forward progress of token-required cache operations in a shared cache, including: snooping an instruction to execute a token-required cache operation; determining if a snoop machine is available and if the snoop machine is set to a reservation state; if the snoop machine is available and the snoop machine is in the reservation state, determining whether the instruction to execute the token-required cache operation owns a token or is a joint instruction; if the instruction is a joint instruction, instructing the operation to retry; if the instruction to execute the token-required cache operation owns a token, dispatching a cache controller; determining whether all required cache controllers of relevant compute nodes are available to execute the instruction; executing the instruction if the required cache controllers are available otherwise not executing the instruction.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of ensuring forward progress of token-based cache operations in a shared cache, the method comprising:
snooping, by a snooper in a cache controller in a shared cache level, an instruction to execute a token-required cache operation that owns a token or an instruction that is a joint instruction that includes a request for a token and the token-required cache operation for execution;
determining, by the snooper, if a snoop machine is available and…

Assignees

• Cox Jason A
• Robinson Eric F
• Wolski Mark J
• IBM

Inventors

• Cox Jason A
• Robinson Eric F
• Wolski Mark J

Classifications

• G06F12/084

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F12/0833 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic