BLOCK MEMORY ENGINE WITH MEMORY CORRUPTION DETECTION

• US 20140115283A1
• Filed: 10/23/2012
• Published: 04/24/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 10/23/2012
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Oracle International Corporation (Oracle Corporation)
• Inventors: Gove, Darryl J., Radovic, Zoran
• Granted Patent: US 9,043,559 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 711/162
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/00 Error detection; Error correction; Monitoring error detection, correction or monitoring in information storage based on relative movement between record carrier and transducer G11B20/18; monitoring, i.e. supervising the progress of recording or reproducing G11B27/36; in static stores G11C29/00
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/1666 where the redundant component is memory or memory area
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/16 Protection against loss of memory contents contains no material, see G06F11/00

Abstract

Techniques for handling version information using a copy engine. In one embodiment, an apparatus comprises a copy engine configured to perform one or more operations associated with a block memory operation in response to a command. Examples of block memory operations may include copy, clear, move, and/or compress operations. In one embodiment, the copy engine is configured to handle version information associated with the block memory operation based on the command. The one or more operations may include operating on data in a cache and/or modifying entries in a memory. In one embodiment, the copy engine is configured to compare version information in the command with stored version information. The copy engine may overwrite or preserve version information based on the command. The copy engine may be a coprocessing element. The copy engine may be configured to maintain coherency with other copy engines and/or processing elements.

Claims

1. A method, comprising:

issuing by a processing element, one or more program instructions that specify a block memory operation, wherein version information is associated with the block memory operation;

sending by the processing element, a command to a coprocessing element based on the block memory operation;

performing, by the coprocessing element, one or more operations associated with the block memory operation in response to the command, wherein the performing includes handling the version information.

2. The method of claim 1,

wherein the processing element includes a load/store unit configured to perform load/store operations having a maximum number of bits;

wherein the one or more operations performed by the coprocessing element have a number of bits that is greater than the maximum number of bits.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the handling the version information includes comparing stored version information with version information included in the command.

4. The method of claim 1,

wherein the block memory operation is a copy operation and wherein the handling the version information includes:

comparing expected version information with stored version information associated with a destination of the copy operation; and

indicating to the processing element that the version information associated with the destination and the expected version information do not match.

5. The method of claim 1,

wherein the block memory operation is a copy operation and wherein the handling the version information includes:

comparing expected version information with stored version information associated with a source of the copy operation; and

indicating to the processing element that the version information associated with the source and the expected version information do not match.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the handling the version information includes overwriting version information associated with the block memory operation.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the handling the version information includes preserving version information associated with the block memory operation.

8. An apparatus, comprising:

a copy engine configured to perform one or more operations associated with a block memory operation in response to a command;

wherein, to perform the one or more operations, the copy engine is configured to handle version information associated with the block memory operation based on the command.

9. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein the copy engine is configured to perform the one or more operations by operating on data in a cache.

10. The apparatus of claim 9, wherein the copy engine is configured to maintain coherency with one or more other processing elements configured to access the cache.

11. The apparatus of claim 8,

wherein the one or more operations include modifying entries in a memory;

and

wherein the copy engine is configured to invalidate one or more cache lines associated with the modified entries of the memory based on the command.

12. The apparatus of claim 11,

wherein the one or more operations include modifying entries in a memory;

and

wherein the copy engine is configured to update one or more cache lines with the modified entries of the memory based on the command.

13. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein, to handle the version information associated with the block memory operation, the copy engine is configured to compare stored version information that is associated with the block memory operation with expected version information included in the command.

14. The apparatus of claim 8, wherein, to handle the version information associated with the block memory operation, the copy engine is configured to:

preserve stored version information associated with the block memory operation in response to an indication in the command that the stored version information should be preserved; and

overwrite stored version information associated with the block memory operation in response to an indication in the command that the stored version information should be overwritten.

15. A non-transitory, computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon that are executable by a computing device to perform operations comprising:

issuing, by a processing element, a command to a copy engine, wherein the command is associated with a block memory operation;

wherein the command indicates whether to preserve or overwrite a version number associated with the block memory operation.

16. The storage medium of claim 15, wherein the command includes a pointer to a block of command parameters.

17. The storage medium of claim 15, wherein issuing the command includes writing to one or more registers of the copy engine.

18. The storage medium of claim 15, wherein the command includes one or more program instructions.

19. The storage medium of claim 15, wherein the command includes a version number associated with the block memory information.

20. The storage medium of claim 19, wherein the operations further comprise:

receiving an indication from the copy engine that the version number does not match a stored version number associated with the block memory operation; and

initiating a corrective action based on the indication.