MANAGING DATA IN A CACHE MEMORY OF A QUESTION ANSWERING SYSTEM

• US 20160203148A1
• Filed: 03/24/2016
• Published: 07/14/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 10/07/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: ALLEN, CORVILLE O., CARTER, BERNADETTE A., GHOSH, RAHUL, KOZHAYA, JOSEPH N.
• Granted Patent: US 11,200,281 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0811 with multilevel cache hierarchies
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/084 with a shared cache
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/0875 with dedicated cache, e.g. instruction or stack
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 12/121 using replacement algorithms
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/172 Caching, prefetching or hoarding of files
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3329 Natural language query formulation or dialogue systems
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/3344 using natural language analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/90324 using system suggestions
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/283 Plural cache memories
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2212/452 Instruction code

Abstract

A technique for caching evidence for answering questions in a cache memory of a data processing system (that is configured to answer questions) includes receiving a first question. The first question is analyzed to identify a first set of characteristics of the first question. A first set of evidence for answering the first question is loaded into the cache memory. A second question is received. The second question is analyzed to identify a second set of characteristics of the second question. A portion of the first set of evidence, whose expected usage in answering the second question is below a determined threshold, is unloaded from the cache memory.

Claims

1. A method for caching evidence for answering questions in a cache memory of a data processing system that is configured to answer questions, comprising:

receiving, by the data processing system, a first question;

analyzing, by the data processing system, the first question to identify a first set of characteristics of the first question;

loading, by the data processing system, a first set of evidence into the cache memory of the data processing system for answering the first question;

receiving, by the data processing system, a second question;

analyzing, by the data processing system, the second question to identify a second set of characteristics of the second question; and

unloading from the cache memory, by the data processing system, a portion of the first set of evidence whose expected usage in answering the second question is below a determined threshold.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the unloading, by the data processing system, a portion of the first set of evidence is performed at a rate that is based on a relevance of the first set of characteristics to the second set of characteristics.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the first set of characteristics and the second set of characteristics each include a question type, an evidence size, primary search attributes, and an evidence score that are respectively associated with the first and second questions.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

loading additional evidence for a hypothesis related to one of the first and second questions into the cache memory when another question is not received.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising comparing the first set of characteristics to the second set of characteristics to determine the expected usage for the first set of evidence.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the cache memory is shared between processors of a node and the data processing system is a high performance computing system that includes multiple nodes.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the unloading, by the data processing system, a portion of the first set of evidence is performed at a rate that is based on a relevance of the first set of characteristics to subsequent question characteristics.