Patent ID: 7571281

Claim:
An apparatus for filtering accesses to a pool of tags indexed into a cache, said apparatus comprising: an input port configured to receive a request to determine whether data units are stored in said cache; an output port configured to generate look-ups for said pool of tags; and a look-up filter coupled to said input port and said output port, said look-up filter configured to filter out superfluous look-ups for said data units to form filtered look-ups wherein said look-up filter comprises: a data unit grouping detector configured to identify multiple data units as identified multiple data units that are indexed by a tag in said pool of tags, wherein said data unit grouping detector comprises comparators for comparing address bits of tags associated with said data units to match the same address bits, wherein a match identifies said tag as a reference for each of said multiple data units, and said comparators include a second quantity of comparators for comparing address bits when said multiple data units are stored in said cache in a sequential order and said second quantity is less than a first quantity associated with arbitrary storage of said data units in said cache, thereby facilitating a reduction of hardware resources for implementing said comparators; and a look-up suppressor configured to prevent a superfluous look-up into said pool of tags for a data unit of said identified multiple data units.