BACKING STORE BUFFER FOR THE REGISTER SAVE ENGINE OF A STACKED REGISTER FILE

摘要

A Backing Store Buffer is interposed between a Physical Register File and the Backing Store in a stacked register file architecture. A Register Save Engine temporarily stores data from registers in the Physical Register File allocated to inactive procedures on-chip, freeing the registers to be re-allocated to new procedures. When the a procedures complete and returns control to a prior, inactive procedure, the Register Store Engine retrieves data associated with the inactive procedure from the Backing Store Buffer to registers in the Physical Register File, and the registers are re-allocated to the inactive procedure. The Register Save Engine saves data from the Backing Store Buffer to to the Backing Store, incurring the significant performance degradation and power consumption required for off-chip RAM access, only when the Backing Store Buffer is full and more data must be saved from the Physical Register File.