Inventors:
Douglas J. Joseph - Danbury CT
Maged M. Michael - Danbury CT
Ashwini Nanda - Mohegan Lake NY
Assignee:
International Business Machines Corp. - Armonk NY
International Classification:
G06F 1200
US Classification:
711150, 711156, 711168, 711149, 711131
Abstract:
For a cache-coherent controller for a multiprocessor system sharing a cache memory, a split pending buffer having two components: a fully-associative part and an indexed part that can easily be made multi-ported. The associative part, PBA, include multiple entries having a valid bit and address fields, and the indexed part, PBC, includes entries including all the other status fields (i. e. , the content part of the pending buffer entries). The split multi-ported pending buffer enables one request and one or more responses to be handled concurrently. Handling a request requires an associative lookup of PBA, a possible directory lookup, a possible read of PBC (in case of collision), and after processing the request in a request protocol handling unit, a possible PBA update, a possible PBC update, and a possible directory update, depending upon the cache coherence protocol implemented. Handling a response requires no PBA lookup, no directory lookup, a PBC read, and after processing the response in a response protocol handling unit, a possible PBA update, a possible PBC update, and a possible directory update, depending upon the cache coherence protocol implemented.