Patent ID: 8335904

Claim:
A method of measuring access rates of a computer memory, comprising: subdividing the memory into subsections; monitoring access rates for each of the subsections; in response to a subsection having a relatively high access rate, subdividing the subsection into multiple subsections that are separately monitored; in response to at least two adjacent subsections having a relatively low access rate, merging the at least two subsections into a single subsection; and maintaining a plurality of elements that correspond to the subsections, wherein the elements are arranged in a tree-like structure, wherein each of the elements includes identifying information of at least one of the subsections and further includes overhead information used in monitoring the at least one of the subsections, wherein a terminal element of the plurality of elements corresponds to one of the subsections and a non-terminal element of the plurality of elements corresponds to a plurality of the subsections, wherein, using the overhead information, an access value is determined for each of the subsections of the memory corresponding to terminal elements and an average access value is determined for the subsections of the memory corresponding to non-terminal elements, the average access value for each non-terminal element being calculated based on an average of the access values of the terminal elements branching from each non-terminal element, wherein the access values and average access values are used in the monitoring of the access rates, and wherein granularity of the monitoring of the access rates is controlled by converting between the terminal elements and the non-terminal elements.