Figure
4-1
shows the relationships between the ICU and the instruction pipeline.
Instructions from Memory
I
to Memory
-+-
i
Addresses
Tag
Instruction
Bypass Path
Arrays
Arrays
I
Address
es from Fetcher
PFB1
PFBO
Instruc
tion Queue
Decode
~
I
Execute
I
Figure 4-1. Instruction Flow
4.1.1
leu
Operations
Instructions from cachable memory regions are copied into the instruction cache array. The fetcher
can access instructions much more
quickly from a cache array than from memory. Cache lines are
loaded either target-ward-first
or
sequentially. Target-ward-first fills start at the requested word,
continue to the end of the
line, and then wrap to fill the remaining words at the beginning of the line.
Sequential
fills start at the first word of the cache line and proceed sequentially
to
the last word of the
line.
The bypass path handles instructions
in
cache-inhibited memory and improves performance during
line fill operations. If a request from the fetcher obtains an entire line from memory, the queue does
not have to wait for the entire
line to reach the cache. The target word (the word requested by the
fetcher) is sent on the bypass path to the queue
while the line fill proceeds, even if the selected line fill
order is not target-ward-first.
Cache
line fills always run to completion, even if the instruction stream branches away from the rest of
the
line. As requested instructions are received, they go to the fetcher from the fill register before the
line fills
in
the cache. The filled line is always placed in the ICU; if an external memory subsystem
error occurs during the
fill, the line is not written to the cache. During a clock cycle, the ICU can send
two instruction to the fetcher.
Preliminary
Cache Operations
4-3
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