International Business Machines Corporation
Software assisted data address prefetch

Abstract:

Three new software instructions assist a processor in performing indirect prefetching, and managing a next-to-prefetch address list. The software instructions populate hardware register locations according to a hardware register description comprising a data structure of at least seven fields. Multiple instances of the data structure, shared across multiple respectively corresponding threads running concurrently, comprise an indirect-prefetch-tracker table. The indirect-prefetch-tracker table assists the processor to efficiently perform indirect prefetching, from random (not necessarily contiguous) memory locations, and reduces processor core real estate dedicated to control and management of data prefetch and loading operations.