Fault-tolerant computer system with hidden local memory refresh

摘要

A fault tolerant computer system having a plurality of processor modules having independent clocks for processing an instruction stream, global memory accessible by all of the processor modules, and a local memory configured within each processor module and clocked synchronously therewith. The local memory is periodically refreshed between accesses to the local memory by the processor. Warning signals indicating a potential access to the local memory are provided to a refresh controller and the local memory is refreshed or the refresh is aborted depending upon the number of clock cycles available before a local memory access occurs. A speculative refresh may be stalled until a processor instruction is decoded to determine whether a local memory access is requested or not.