Maintenance Queue Circuitry for Asynchronous Address Translation
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Solution Overview
Problem
In data processing systems, maintenance operations such as removing stale translations in address translation circuitry can cause storage to become inaccessible, leading to prolonged blocking of requesters, which becomes unacceptable as storage size increases.
Innovation Solution
An apparatus and method that include a maintenance queue circuitry to store and manage maintenance operations asynchronously, allowing lookups to proceed without waiting for maintenance completion, by providing immediate acknowledgments and using a cache to store translations, thereby reducing the time storage is blocked.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If maintenance operations are performed on storage, then storage reliability is improved, but storage accessibility deteriorates causing requester blocking
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a maintenance queue that stores maintenance operations in advance before they are executed. When a maintenance operation is received, it is queued and an immediate acknowledgment is sent to the requester, allowing the requester to continue without waiting. The maintenance operation is performed asynchronously in the background, separating the timing of maintenance execution from requester dependency.
Solution Approach 2:
The maintenance queue acts as an intermediary between the requester and the storage maintenance process. It buffers maintenance operations, allowing requesters to submit maintenance requests and receive immediate acknowledgments while the actual maintenance is performed asynchronously by maintenance circuitry, decoupling the requester from the maintenance execution timeline.
2Quantity of substance
If storage size increases, then data capacity is improved, but maintenance time increases causing longer requester blocking
Solution Approach 1:
The maintenance queue allows maintenance operations to be submitted and acknowledged in advance, before actual maintenance execution. This preliminary queuing mechanism ensures that requesters receive immediate acknowledgments regardless of storage size, while maintenance performs scans and operations asynchronously without blocking requesters.
Solution Approach 2:
The system maintains continuous operation by allowing lookup operations to proceed uninterrupted while maintenance operations execute asynchronously in the background. The maintenance queue enables overlapping of maintenance and lookup operations, ensuring that useful actions (data access) continue without interruption while maintenance performs its scanning and cleanup tasks.
3Reliability
If synchronous maintenance is performed, then maintenance completion is ensured, but requester access is blocked until maintenance finishes
Solution Approach 1:
The maintenance queue serves as an intermediary that receives maintenance operations from requesters and forwards them to maintenance circuitry for asynchronous execution. The queue decouples the requester from maintenance completion, allowing requesters to receive immediate acknowledgments while maintenance operations complete in the background without blocking requester access.
Solution Approach 2:
The system transitions from synchronous to asynchronous maintenance execution. The maintenance queue dynamically manages maintenance operations, allowing them to be submitted, acknowledged, and executed at different times rather than requiring the requester to wait for completion. This dynamic timing separation improves requester productivity while maintaining maintenance reliability.
Data Source
AI summary
There is provided an apparatus that includes an input port to receive, from a requester, any one of: a lookup operation comprising an input address, and a maintenance operation. Maintenance queue circuitry stores a maintenance queue of at least one maintenance operation and address storage stores a translation between the input address and an output address in an output address space. In response to receiving the input address, the output address is provided in dependence on the maintenance queue. In response to storing the maintenance operation, the maintenance queue circuitry causes an acknowledgement to be sent to the requester. By providing a separate maintenance queue for performing the maintenance operation, there is no need for a requester to be blocked while maintenance is performed.