Title: Buffered freepointer management memory system

Abstract

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.

Inventors:

Jacob, Philip; Strenski, Philip N.

Issue Date:

2021-01-26

Research Org.:

International Business Machines Corp., Armonk, NY (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE

OSTI Identifier:

1805431

Patent Number(s):

10901887

Application Number:

15/982,792

Assignee:

International Business Machines Corporation (Armonk, NY)

Patent Classifications (CPCs):

G - PHYSICS G06 - COMPUTING G06F - ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING

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G - PHYSICS G06 - COMPUTING G06F - ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING

G06F12/0246 - {in block erasable memory, e.g. flash memory}
G06F12/0862 - with prefetch
G06F13/1673 - {using buffers}

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DOE Contract Number:  

B621073

Resource Type:

Patent

Resource Relation:

Patent File Date: 05/17/2018

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English