Patent ID: 8166277

Claim:
A method of performing data prefetching using indirect addressing, the method comprising: initiating an indirect data prefetching process, the indirect data prefetching process further comprising: determining a first memory address of a pointer associated with a data prefetch instruction; fetching a content of a memory location at the first memory address, wherein the memory location is in a lower level cache, and wherein the content is a first data block that is a cache line; determining a second memory address from the content of the memory location at the first memory address, wherein the second memory address is an address at which desired data of interest is stored; and fetching a second data block including the desired data from the second memory address, wherein the data prefetch instruction includes an indirect address field that identifies whether an effective address associated with the data prefetch instruction is a pointer for the desired data that is to be prefetched or whether the effective address corresponds to an address for the desired data and the indirect address field also identifies a number of indirection levels.