Patent ID: 7502901

Claim:
A semiconductor device comprising: a processor; a first memory unit accessed by the processor and serving as a main memory; a plurality of page memory units obtained by partitioning a second memory unit which is different from the first memory unit and is accessible within several clock cycles by the processor at a speed higher than a speed at which the first memory unit is accessible and serves as a cache memory such that each of the page memory units has a storage capacity of several kilobytes; a tag for adding, to each of the page memory units, tag information indicative of an address value in the first memory unit and priority information indicative of a replacement priority; a tag comparator for comparing, upon receipt of an access request from the processor, the address value in the first memory unit with the tag information held by the tag; and a replacement control unit for replacing respective contents of the page memory units, wherein the plurality of page memory units are assigned to groups each composed of a specified number of page memory units to compose a plurality of bank memories, the semiconductor device further comprising a bank control unit for managing the plurality of bank memories, the replacement control unit determines, upon receipt of an access request to any of the page memory units, whether or not information on a requested address of the page memory unit is held in the tag, selects, if the address information is not held, one of the plurality of page memory units based on preliminarily specified replacement information, releases the selected page memory unit, and transfers data from the requested address from the first memory unit into the page memory unit, and wherein when an application under operation is changed, the replacement control unit evenly redistributes empty memories to application programs to be executed.