Patent ID: 9697136
Date: 2017-07-04
CPC Classifications: G06F

Claim:
1. Apparatus comprising: a descriptor ring to store pointers to memory locations; and prefetching circuitry to detect pointers read from said descriptor ring and to prefetch address translation data for memory addresses corresponding to said pointers, wherein: said prefetching circuitry is configured to identify said descriptor ring using one or more programmable descriptor ring identifiers specifying one or more regions of a memory address space serving as said descriptor ring and includes pointer identifying circuitry to identify said pointers by detecting candidate pointer data read from said descriptor ring having one or more predetermined pointer characteristics, said one or more predetermined pointer characteristics are that one or more fields within said candidate pointer data match one or more predetermined values corresponding to a valid memory address, and said one or more predetermined values are a most significant bit portion of a predetermined length of said candidate pointer data is all zeros or all ones.