Grouping write data in write-back cache to enhance data locality and write efficiency

Abstract

Write-back operations are grouped into a write-back group to enhance data locality. A control circuitry of a cache receives a memory access request that causes new data to be written into the cache. The cache is organized into multiple sets, and the memory access request indicates an address that belongs to a target set of the cache. The control circuitry identifies a target cache line in the target set as an evict victim. The control circuitry searches in neighboring sets of the target set to identify one or more dirty cache lines having neighboring addresses of the evict victim. The control circuitry groups write-back operations of the evict victim and the one or more dirty cache lines into one write-back group to write back to a memory.

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