Abstract
Prefetching brings data into the cache before the processor expects it, thereby eliminating potential cache misses. There are two major prefetching schemes. In a software scheme, the compiler predicts memory access patterns and places prefetch instructions in the code. In a hardware scheme, hardware predicts memory access patterns at runtime and brings data into the cache before the processor requires it.
This paper proposes a hardware scheme for prefetching, where a second processor is used for prefetching data for the primary processor. The scheme does not predict memory access patterns, but rather uses the second processor to run ahead of the primary processor so as to detect future memory accesses and prefetch these references.
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© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Manoharan, S., Kim, SM. (2000). A Hardware Scheme for Data Prefetching. In: Bubak, M., Afsarmanesh, H., Hertzberger, B., Williams, R. (eds) High Performance Computing and Networking. HPCN-Europe 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1823. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45492-6_35
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45492-6_35
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