Method of prefetching using a incrementing/decrementing counter
The present invention provides a pre-fetch controller and a method thereof for efficiently pre-fetching data from a memory device. The method includes initializing a counter value; fetching a data from the memory and subtracting the counter value by a first value when a pre-fetching is activated; adding a second value to the counter value when a cache hit occurs; comparing the counter value with a first threshold value; and when the counter value is smaller than the first threshold value, stopping pre-fetching the data from the memory.
1. A method for pre-fetching data from a memory, comprising the steps of:
initializing a counter value;
pre-fetching a predetermined data from the memory and subtracting a first value from the counter value each time pre-fetching is activated;
adding a second value to the counter value when a cache hit occurs;
comparing the counter value with a first threshold value; and
when the counter value is smaller than the first threshold value, stopping pre-fetching data from the memory.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein when the pre-fetching is stopped, the counter value is blocked from being decreased by the first value.
3. The method of claim 2 , wherein when the pre-fetching is stopped and the cache hit occurs, the second value is added to the counter value.
4. The method of claim 3 , wherein when the pre-fetching is stopped and the counter value is larger than a second threshold value, pre-fetching data from the memory is restarted.
5. The method of claim 4 , wherein the second threshold value is larger than the first threshold value.
6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the second value is an integer multiple of the first value.
7. A method for pre-fetching data from a memory, comprising the steps of:
initializing a counter value;
pre-fetching a predetermined data from the memory and adding a first value to the counter value each time pre-fetching is activated;
subtracting a second value from the counter value when a cache hit occurs;
comparing the counter value with a first threshold value; and
when the counter value is larger than the first threshold value, stopping pre-fetching data from the memory.
8. The method of claim 7 , wherein when the pre-fetching is stopped, the counter value is blocked from being increased by the first value.
9. The method of claim 8 , wherein when the pre-fetching is stopped and the cache hit occurs, the counter value is decreased by the second value.
10. The method of claim 9 , wherein when the pre-fetching is stopped and the counter value is smaller than a second threshold value, pre-fetching data from the memory is restarted.
11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the second threshold value is smaller than the first threshold value.
12. The method of claim 7 , wherein the second value is an integer multiple of the first value.