Patent ID: 8327077

Claim:
A data retrieval method for a parallel computing system, the parallel computing system including a plurality of computing nodes, a computing node including at least one processor and at least one memory device, the method comprising: issuing, at a processor, a command; passing the command to a stream prefetch engine and a list prefetch engine; and operating the stream prefetch engine and the list prefetch engine to prefetch data to be needed in subsequent clock cycles in the processor in response to the passed command, wherein the operating the stream prefetch engine includes steps of: determining a slowest data or instruction stream and a fastest data or instruction stream, based on speeds of data or instruction streams processed by the processor; decreasing a prefetching depth of the slowest data or instruction stream, the prefetching depth referring to a specific amount of data or instructions to be prefetched; and increasing the prefetching depth of the fastest data or instruction stream by the decreased prefetching depth of the slowest data or instruction stream.