Patent ID: 7856633

Claim:
A method including: dedicating a first portion comprising one or more ways of an N way set associative cache exclusively to a first thread; dedicating a second portion comprising one or more ways of the cache exclusively to a second thread; dynamically sharing a third portion comprising one or more ways of the cache between the first and second threads; and performing victim selection in the cache by, examining a Least Recently Used (LRU) history for a selected set to identify a least recently used way within the cache as a candidate way to store an information item associated with the first thread; determining whether the candidate way is within the first or the third portion of the cache; if the candidate way is within the first or the third portion of the cache, then storing the information associated with the first thread in the candidate way; and if the candidate way is within the second portion of the cache, then identifying a further way within the cache as being the candidate way, wherein the further way is not the candidate way previously identified.