Dynamic index selection in a hardware cache

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-8949530-B2
Application number	US-201113196071-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Aug 2, 2011
Priority date	Aug 2, 2011
Publication date	Feb 3, 2015
Grant date	Feb 3, 2015

Abstract

Systems and methods are disclosed for improving the performance of cache memory in a computer system by dynamically selecting an index for caching main memory while an application is running. A disclosed example of a memory system includes a cache including a data array, a primary tag array, and at least one secondary tag array. A currently selected index is used to index data bits to the data array and tag bits to the primary tag array. The performance of at least one candidate index is evaluated by indexing tag bits to the secondary tag array, without caching any data using the candidate index while the candidate index is under evaluation. If the candidate index has a better hit rate than the currently selected index, the memory system switches to using the candidate index to cache data.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for improving performance of cache memory in a computer, comprising:
the computer running a software application that generates memory blocks to be stored in memory;
a cache controller indexing data bits of the memory blocks to a data array in the cache memory using a currently selected index;
the cache controller simultaneously indexing tag bits of the memory blocks to a primary tag array using the currently selected index and indexing tag bits…

Assignees

• Krishna Mvv A
• Yifrach Shaul
• IBM

Inventors

• Krishna Mvv A
• Yifrach Shaul

Classifications

• G06F12/0864 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F2212/601

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F12/0895

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F12/08 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic