History table for set prediction for accessing a set associative cache

摘要

A cache control maintains a history table SETLAT for the prediction of line entry (i.e., set member) within a congruence class for cache accessing. For a given cache access, a SETLAT entry can be selected based on the requesting logical address bits directly. The selection of a SETLAT entry may also be based on the hashing of such logical address bits together with other information in order to achieve sufficient randomization. A similar hashing history table may be devised to predict virtual address translation information with high accuracy. Such prediction mechanisms not only allow efficient implementation of the cache access path but also offer the opportunity of achieving multiple accesses per cycle. The proposed prediction method also provides a generic approach to efficient implementations for various directory based table accesses.