Apple Inc.
On-demand Memory Allocation

Abstract:

Techniques are disclosed relating to dynamically allocating and mapping private memory for requesting circuitry. Disclosed circuitry may receive a private address and translate the private address to a virtual address (which an MMU may then translate to physical address to actually access a storage element). In some embodiments, private memory allocation circuitry is configured to generate page table information and map private memory pages for requests if the page table information is not already setup. In various embodiments, this may advantageously allow dynamic private memory allocation, e.g., to efficiently allocate memory for graphics shaders with different types of workloads. Disclosed caching techniques for page table information may improve performance relative to traditional techniques. Further, disclosed embodiments may facilitate memory consolidation across a device such as a graphics processor.