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Performing the Prefetch Memory Access

In this section we consider three issues related to performing a prefetch memory access. First, is it important to check the caches while searching for the prefetched data, or can one skip the caches and go straight to main memory? Second, should prefetched data be placed directly into the primary data cache, or somewhere further down in the cache hierarchy? Finally, we will briefly discuss why placing prefetched data in a separate target buffer rather than the normal cache hierarchy is not a good idea in general.



tcm@
Sat Jun 25 15:13:04 PDT 1994