Patent ID: 8200917

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a batch of read requests from a processing pipeline for read-modify-write functions, wherein the batch comprises a plurality of read requests and each read request requests data at a memory location in a memory, and wherein the batch of read requests originates from the processing pipeline; sequentially processing each read request in the batch of read requests, wherein processing each read request includes: identifying a cache line in a cache storing a copy of the data requested by a respective read request in the batch of read requests, determining whether the cache line is locked, when the cache line is not locked, processing the read request and locking the cache line to accesses by additional read requests in the batch of read requests, and when the cache line is locked, holding the read request until the cache line is unlocked; and after the batch of read requests is processed, processing a corresponding batch of write requests for the read-modify-write functions.