System and method for improving multicast performance in banked shared memory architectures

摘要

A system and method for improving multicast performance in banked shared memory architectures. Temporal localities created by multicast packets in a shared memory bank are addressed through caching. In one embodiment, multicast packets are stored in a cache memory that is associated with a bank of shared memory. In another embodiment, read requests for multicast packets are stored in a read request cache, wherein additional read requests are accumulated prior to an actual read event.