US 11,947,461 B2
Prefetch unit filter for microprocessor
Mohit Karve, Austin, TX (US); Naga P. Gorti, Austin, TX (US); Guy L. Guthrie, Austin, TX (US); and Sanjeev Ghai, Round Rock, TX (US)
Assigned to International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed by International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US)
Filed on Jan. 10, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/572,245.
Prior Publication US 2023/0222066 A1, Jul. 13, 2023
Int. Cl. G06F 12/0862 (2016.01); G06F 12/0804 (2016.01); G06F 12/0817 (2016.01); G06F 12/0871 (2016.01)
CPC G06F 12/0862 (2013.01) [G06F 12/0804 (2013.01); G06F 12/0817 (2013.01); G06F 12/0871 (2013.01); G06F 2212/1021 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method of processing data in a processor to reduce duplicative prefetch requests, the method comprising:
receiving a request for data at a cache;
identifying whether the request for data received at the cache is a demand request or a prefetch request; and
determining, in response to identifying that the request for data received at the cache is a prefetch request, whether to terminate the prefetch request,
wherein determining whether to terminate the prefetch request comprises:
determining how many hits have occurred for a prefetch stream corresponding to the prefetch request received at the cache; and
determining, based upon the number of hits that have occurred for the prefetch stream corresponding to the prefetch request received by the cache, whether to terminate the prefetch request.