Abstract: An apparatus, method, and system for memory bandwidth aware data prefetching is presented. The method may comprise monitoring a number of request responses received in an interval at a current prefetch request generation rate, comparing the number of request responses received in the interval to at least a first threshold, and adjusting the current prefetch request generation rate to an updated prefetch request generation rate by selecting the updated prefetch request generation rate from a plurality of prefetch request generation rates, based on the comparison. The request responses may be NACK or RETRY responses. The method may further comprise either retaining a current prefetch request generation rate or selecting a maximum prefetch request generation rate as the updated prefetch request generation rate in response to an indication that prefetching is accurate.

Abstract: A method, apparatus, and system for reducing pipeline stalls due to address translation misses is presented. An apparatus comprises a memory access instruction pipeline, a translation lookaside buffer coupled to the memory access instruction pipeline, and a TLB miss queue coupled to both the TLB and the memory access instruction pipeline. The TLB miss queue is configured to selectively store a first memory access instruction that has been removed from the memory access instruction pipeline as a result of the first memory access instruction missing in the TLB along with information associated with the first memory access instruction. The TLB miss queue is further configured to reintroduce the first memory access instruction to the memory access instruction pipeline associated with a return of an address translation related to the first memory access instruction.

Abstract: A method, apparatus, and system for prefetching exclusive cache coherence state for store instructions is disclosed. An apparatus may comprise a cache and a gather buffer coupled to the cache. The gather buffer may be configured to store a plurality of cache lines, each cache line of the plurality of cache lines associated with a store instruction. The gather buffer may be further configured to determine whether a first cache line associated with a first store instruction should be allocated in the cache. If the first cache line associated with the first store instruction is to be allocated in the cache, the gather buffer is configured to issue a pre-write request to acquire exclusive cache coherency state to the first cache line associated with the first store instruction.

Abstract: A method, apparatus, and system for reducing pipeline stalls due to address translation misses is presented. An apparatus comprises a memory access instruction pipeline, a translation lookaside buffer coupled to the memory access instruction pipeline, and a TLB miss queue coupled to both the TLB and the memory access instruction pipeline. The TLB miss queue is configured to selectively store a first memory access instruction that has been removed from the memory access instruction pipeline as a result of the first memory access instruction missing in the TLB along with information associated with the first memory access instruction. The TLB miss queue is further configured to reintroduce the first memory access instruction to the memory access instruction pipeline associated with a return of an address translation related to the first memory access instruction.

Abstract: A method, apparatus, and system for prefetching exclusive cache coherence state for store instructions is disclosed. An apparatus may comprise a cache and a gather buffer coupled to the cache. The gather buffer may be configured to store a plurality of cache lines, each cache line of the plurality of cache lines associated with a store instruction. The gather buffer may be further configured to determine whether a first cache line associated with a first store instruction should be allocated in the cache. If the first cache line associated with the first store instruction is to be allocated in the cache, the gather buffer is configured to issue a pre-write request to acquire exclusive cache coherency state to the first cache line associated with the first store instruction.

Abstract: An apparatus, method, and system for memory bandwidth aware data prefetching is presented. The method may comprise monitoring a number of request responses received in an interval at a current prefetch request generation rate, comparing the number of request responses received in the interval to at least a first threshold, and adjusting the current prefetch request generation rate to an updated prefetch request generation rate by selecting the updated prefetch request generation rate from a plurality of prefetch request generation rates, based on the comparison. The request responses may be NACK or RETRY responses. The method may further comprise either retaining a current prefetch request generation rate or selecting a maximum prefetch request generation rate as the updated prefetch request generation rate in response to an indication that prefetching is accurate.

Abstract: Adaptively predicting usefulness of prefetches generated by hardware prefetch engines of processor-based devices is disclosed. In this regard, a processor-based device provides a hardware prefetch engine including a sampler circuit and a predictor circuit. The sampler circuit stores data related to demand requests and prefetch requests directed to memory addresses corresponding to a subset of sets of a cache of the processor-based device. The predictor circuit includes a plurality of confidence counters that correspond to the memory addresses tracked by the sampler circuit, and that indicate a level of confidence in the usefulness of the corresponding memory addresses. The confidence counters provided by the predictor circuit are trained in response to demand request hits and misses (and, in some aspects, prefetch misses) on the memory addresses tracked by the sampler circuit. The predictor circuit may then use the confidence counters to generate usefulness predictions for subsequent prefetch requests.

Abstract: Providing early pipeline optimization of conditional instructions in processor-based systems is disclosed. In one aspect, an instruction pipeline of a processor-based system detects a mispredicted branch (i.e., following a misprediction of a condition associated with a speculatively executed conditional branch instruction), and records a current state of one or more condition flags as a condition flags snapshot. After a pipeline flush is initiated and a corrected fetch path is restarted, an instruction decode stage of the instruction pipeline uses the condition flags snapshot to apply optimizations to conditional instructions detected within the corrected fetch path. According to some aspects, the condition flags snapshot is subsequently invalidated upon encountering a condition-flag-writing instruction within the corrected fetch path.