Storing dynamically sized buffers within a cache

摘要

A system and method for buffering intermediate data in a processing pipeline architecture stores the intermediate data in a shared cache that is coupled between one or more pipeline processing units and an external memory. The shared cache provides storage that is used by multiple pipeline processing units. The storage capacity of the shared cache is dynamically allocated to the different pipeline processing units as needed, to avoid stalling the upstream units, thereby improving overall system throughput.