INFORMATION PROCESSOR

摘要

PURPOSE: To improve the function of the look-ahead circuit of data referred to by a processor. CONSTITUTION: A prefetch unit 105 incorporates a register for holding a group of the data read by a read request along with a circuit for issuing the read request of a group of the data to be looked ahead and reads the group of the data from a cache memory 1001 or a memory 1 under the control of a cache request unit 101. The plural groups of the data can be looked ahead. In the case of being specified by the processor 2, the read of a block to which the data to be prefetched belong to the cache memory 1001 is requested. The circuit for invalidating the data when the already prefetched data are rewritten by the processor 2 later is provided as well. The element of the vector of a complicated structure such as an indexed vector can be also read. Interruption generated inside the processor 2 can be coped with as well.