| 摘要 |
An I/O streaming cache is provided to improve the data transfer bandwidth of an I/O bus of a computer system. The I/O streaming cache comprises at least one data array, a parent tag array, at least one child tag array, and control circuitry. The data arrays comprise a number of cache lines, each cache line having at least two cache line segments, for storing data being retrieved/prefetched during read operations and data being written during write operations. The parent tag array comprises a number of parent tag entries, one parent tag entry for each cache line, for describing a memory page being mapped by the corresponding cache line. The child tag arrays comprise a number of child tag entries, one child tag entry for each cache line segment, for describing the data blocks stored in the corresponding cache line segments. Each parent tag entry is parent to the child tag entries of the cache line segments of its corresponding cache line. The control circuitry controls responses to the data reading and writing operations against the memory by the I/O devices using the data arrays, and the parent and child cache tag arrays.
|
