🚀 go-pugleaf

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.<21984@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> brooks@maddog.llnl.gov (Eugene Brooks) Writes:
>Even explicit cache flushing for the communication could be used, but
>the cost of doing this is horrible context switching overhead for cache
>sizes large enough to be useful. Your notion of including a context descriptor
>in the cache line is useful for this, but one will still pay a cost when
>you need to clear the cache of a specific descriptor upon process death.
>At least, it is a better situation than having to clear the cache on every
>context switch.
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A cache that stores context numbers does not need to flush an entry upon
the death of a given context.  The cache will flush the entry when that 
particular context number is used again.    A cache controller in this
type of system will include a function to flush based on context number 
only.  Flushing based purely on context will save the processor from having
to flush the entire cache when a context is reused.
-- 
-doug carmean
-ROSS Technology, 7748 Hwy 290 West Suite 400, Austin, TX 78736
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