Patent ID: 6901500
Filing Date: 2005-05-31
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A system for prefetching information from a computer storage comprising: a central processing unit operable to transmit to a transfer bus a memory transfer request containing a desired memory address; a system controller operable to receive the memory transfer request from the transfer bus and to retrieve a prefetch block of data from the computer storage in response to determining that a stream buffer local to the system controller does not contain a copy of data stored at the desired memory address, the system controller further operable to retrieve the data from the stream buffer and communicate the data to the central processing unit in response to determining that the stream buffer contains a copy of the data stored at the desired memory address; and a tag table comprising a plurality of tags, each tag identifying a location in the stream buffer where a prefetch block is stored, wherein the tag table resides external to the stream buffer.