PROVIDING MEMORY BANDWIDTH COMPRESSION USING BACK-TO-BACK READ OPERATIONS BY COMPRESSED MEMORY CONTROLLERS (CMCs) IN A CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT (CPU)-BASED SYSTEM

摘要

Providing memory bandwidth compression using back-to-back read operations by compressed memory controllers (CMCs) in a central processing unit (CPU)-based system is disclosed. In this regard, in some aspects, a CMC is configured to receive a memory read request to a physical address in a system memory, and read a compression indicator (CI) for the physical address from error correcting code (ECC) bits of a first memory block in a memory line associated with the physical address. Based on the CI, the CMC determines whether the first memory block comprises compressed data. If not, the CMC performs a back-to-back read of one or more additional memory blocks of the memory line in parallel with returning the first memory block. Some aspects may further improve memory access latency by writing compressed data to each of a plurality of memory blocks of the memory line, rather than only to the first memory block.