US 6,983,347 B2 | ||
Dynamically managing saved processor soft states | ||
Ravi Kumar Arimilli, Austin, Tex. (US); Robert Alan Cargnoni, Austin, Tex. (US); Guy Lynn Guthrie, Austin, Tex. (US); and William John Starke, Round Rock, Tex. (US) | ||
Assigned to International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, N.Y. (US) | ||
Filed on Dec. 05, 2002, as Appl. No. 10/313,319. | ||
Prior Publication US 2004/0111562 A1, Jun. 10, 2004 | ||
Int. Cl. G06F 12/00 (2006.01) |
U.S. Cl. 711—141 | 17 Claims |
1. A method of managing saved process states in memory, the method comprising:
storing a soft state of an idle process into a system memory at a lowest level of a volatile memory hierarchy;
in response to a memory controller of the system memory receiving a kill type operation specifying an address, snooping the
kill type operation against the soft state in the system memory; and
in response to the snooping resulting in a snoop hit, invalidating data within the soft state associated with the address; wherein the soft state is non-essential process execution data that includes one or more of a set that includes a branch history
table and a content of a buffer that contains an address translation information.
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