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Buffered freepointer management memory system

Patent ·
OSTI ID:1805431
A system and method of buffered freepointer management to handle burst traffic to fixed size structures in an external memory system. A circular queue stores implicitly linked free memory locations, along with an explicitly linked list in memory. The queue is updated at the head with newly released locations, and new locations from memory are added at the tail. When a freed location in the queue is reused, external memory need not be updated. When the queue is full, the system attempts to release some of the freepointers such as by dropping them if they are already linked, updating the linked list in memory only if those dropped are not already linked. Latency can be further reduced by loading new locations from memory when the queue is nearly empty, rather than waiting for empty condition, and by writing unlinked locations to memory when the queue is nearly full.
Research Organization:
International Business Machines Corp., Armonk, NY (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Assignee:
International Business Machines Corporation (Armonk, NY)
Patent Number(s):
10,901,887
Application Number:
15/982,792
OSTI ID:
1805431
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English