Patent ID: 9046916
Filing Date: 2015-06-02
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method for fetching instructions for an NFA in a dynamically configurable NFA cell array, said method comprising: requesting an instruction from an L1 cache for an NFA state in the cell array; determining, by the cache, if a cache line for the requested instruction is present in the cache and if at least one successive cache line is present in the cache; if the cache line is absent, fetching the cache line from an external memory; if the at least one successive cache line is absent, fetching the successive cache line from an external memory; if the cache line is present, returning the requested instruction; encoding a last flag in at least one instruction; if a previous returning cache line contains a last flag, discarding subsequent fetched cache lines returning to the cache; and if a previous cache line present in the cache contains a last flag, suppressing fetching a cache line absent from the cache.