SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR EXCLUSIVE READ CACHING IN A VIRTUALIZED COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT

A technique for efficient cache management demotes a unit of data from a higher cache level to a lower cache level in a cache hierarchy when the higher level cache evicts the unit of data. In a virtualization computing environment, eviction of the unit of data may be inferred by observing privileged...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors LIU, DENG, SCALES, DANIEL J
Format Patent
LanguageEnglish
French
German
Published 26.08.2015
Subjects
CALCULATING
COMPUTING
COUNTING
ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
PHYSICS
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Summary:A technique for efficient cache management demotes a unit of data from a higher cache level to a lower cache level in a cache hierarchy when the higher level cache evicts the unit of data. In a virtualization computing environment, eviction of the unit of data may be inferred by observing privileged memory and disk operations performed by a guest operating system and trapped by virtualization software for execution. When the unit of data is inferred to be evicted, the unit of data is demoted by transferring the unit of data into the lower cache level. This technique enables exclusive caching without direct involvement or modification of the guest operating system. In alternative embodiments, a pseudo-driver installed within the guest operating system explicitly tracks memory operations and transmits page eviction information to the lower level cache, which is able to cache evicted pages while maintaining cache exclusivity.
Bibliography:Application Number: EP20130786010