Methods and systems for pushing dirty linefill buffer contents to external bus upon linefill request failures

摘要

Methods and systems are disclosed for recovering dirty linefill buffer data upon linefill request failures. When a linefill request failure occurs and the linefill buffer has been marked as dirty, such as due to a system bus failure, the contents of the linefill buffer are pushed back to the system bus. The dirty data within the linefill buffer can then be used to update the external memory. The disclosed embodiments are useful for a wide variety of applications, including those requiring low data failure rates.

主权项

1. A cache system, comprising:
a cache configured to store a plurality of cache lines; a linefill buffer configured to store at least one cache line; a load/store unit configured to store data within the linefill buffer during a linefill request for the cache, the stored data being received from a system bus; and a cache controller configured to mark the stored data as dirty if updated within the linefill buffer during the linefill request and to push the dirty data from the linefill buffer to the system bus if the linefill request fails.