Method and apparatus for supporting wide operations using atomic sequences

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9501243-B2
Application number	US-201314045602-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 3, 2013
Priority date	Oct 3, 2013
Publication date	Nov 22, 2016
Grant date	Nov 22, 2016

Abstract

Implementations of wide atomic sequences are achieved by augmenting a load operation designed to initiate an atomic sequence and augmenting a conditional storing operation that typically terminates the atomic sequence. The augmented load operation is designed to further allocate a memory buffer besides initiating the atomic sequence. The conditional storing operation is augmented to check the allocated memory buffer for any data stored therein. If one or more data words are detected in the memory buffer, the conditional storing operation stores the detected data word(s) and another word provided as operand in a concatenation of memory locations. The achieved wide atomic sequences enable the hardware system to support wide memory operations and wide operations in general.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method comprising:
initiating, by a processor, an atomic sequence by executing an operation designed to initiate the atomic sequence and allocate a memory buffer;
storing one or more data words in a concatenation of one or more memory locations by executing a conditional storing operation, the conditional storing operation being designed to automatically check the memory buffer allocated for any data stored therein, and store the one or more data words b…

Assignees

• Cavium Inc

Inventors

• Kessler Richard E
• Bertone Michael S
• Comis Christopher J

Classifications

• G06F3/0671

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F3/0656 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F3/0614 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F9/3004 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic

• G06F9/30072

  Physics · mapped topic