MECHANISM FOR REDUCING SOFTWARE DISTRIBUTION COST

摘要

The present invention provides a mechanism for prefetching array data efficiently from within a loop. A prefetch instruction is parameterized by a register from a set of rotating registers. On each loop iteration, a prefetch is implemented according to the parameterized prefetch instruction, and the address targeted by the prefetch instruction is adjusted. The registers are rotated for each loop iteration, and the prefetch instruction parameterized by the rotating register is adjusted accordingly. The number of iterations between prefetches for a given array is determined by the number of elements in the set of rotating register.