Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
ACCELERATING ACCESSES TO PRIVATE REGIONS IN A REGION-BASED CACHE DIRECTORY SCHEME

Abstract:

Systems, apparatuses, and methods for accelerating accesses to private regions in a region-based cache directory scheme are disclosed. A system includes multiple processing nodes, one or more memory devices, and one or more region-based cache directories to manage cache coherence among the nodes' cache subsystems. Region-based cache directories track coherence on a region basis rather than on a cache line basis, wherein a region includes multiple cache lines. The cache directory entries for regions that are only accessed by a single node are cached locally at the node. Updates to the reference count for these entries are made locally rather than sending updates to the cache directory. When a second node accesses a first node's private region, the region is now considered shared, and the entry for this region is transferred from the first node back to the cache directory.