Patent ID: 7389385

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving one or more batches of samples associated with cache misses from a performance monitoring unit in a processor system; selecting one or more samples from the one or more batches of samples based on delinquent information; generating a performance impact indicator associated with the one or more samples; determining whether to initiate a delinquent path identification analysis based on the performance impact indicator; when the delinquent path identification analysis is initiated, determining whether the cache misses are in a delinquent region; when the cache misses are in the delinquent region, initiating a garbage collector analysis to attempt to identify one or more delinquent paths; when the cache misses are not in the delinquent region, initiating a compiler analysis to attempt identify one or more delinquent paths; and identifying one or more prefetch points to insert prefetch instructions based on one of the garbage collector analysis and the compiler analysis.