Method and apparatus employing lookahead to reduce memory bank contention for decoupled operand references

摘要

A data storage system for interleaved memory banks employs a lookahead search of data request addresses to reduce the impact of bank collisions. The system permits out of order load and store referencing patterns. Status of the memory systems individual banks is maintained by a scoreboard which contains the instantaneous status of each memory bank, and a pipeline which contains upcoming transitions of banks from the active to the inactive state. Out of order operations is achieved by selecting the oldest operand reference whose banks are not currently active. Reordering of elements is achieved by assigning a sequence number to each operand reference as it becomes available.