On-demand shareability conversion in a heterogeneous shared virtual memory

Abstract

The aspects include systems and methods of managing virtual memory page shareability. A processor or memory management unit may set in a page table an indication that a virtual memory page is not shareable with an outer domain processor. The processor or memory management unit may monitor for when the outer domain processor attempts or has attempted to access the virtual memory page. In response to the outer domain processor attempting to access the virtual memory page, the processor may perform a virtual memory page operation on the virtual memory page.

Description

[0001] related application [0002] This application claims the benefit of priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 62 / 026,319, filed July 18, 2014, entitled "On-Demand Shareability Conversion In A Heterogeneous Shared Virtual Memory," the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference. Background technique [0003] In Heterogeneous Shared Architecture (HSA), Shared Virtual Memory (SVM) is a method of memory management that allows more than one processor to access a virtual memory location. Using shared virtual memory, a single-process virtual address space from an application running on one processor (such as a central processing unit (CPU)) can span across another processor (such as a graphics processing unit (GPU) or digital signal processor (DSP)) to be shared by other threads or cores. Processors can share a single page table per application for virtual-to-physical address translation, which is more efficient than duplicating the page table for each pr...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

However, marking all user memory as shareable is inefficient because in practice much less memory is actually shared between threads

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