ARM Assigned Five Patents

Write operations to NVM
ARM Ltd., Cambridge, Great Britain, has been assigned a patent (11,429,532) developed by Saidi, Ali Ghassan, Austin, TX, and Grisenthwaite, Richard Roy, Cambridge, Great Britain, for “write operations to non-volatile memory.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “An apparatus for processing data and a method of data processing are provided. A processor core in the apparatus performs data processing operations in response to a sequence of instructions, including write operations which write data items to a non-volatile memory. A write-back cache stores local copies of the data items retrieved from the memory and written to the memory by the processor core. A storage unit is provided which stores indications of the write operations initiated by the processor core and the processor core is configured to respond to an end instruction by causing the local copies of data items which are the subject of the write operations by the processor core, and for which an indication is stored in the storage unit, to be cleaned from the write-back cache to the memory. The indications of the write operations stored in the storage unit are then cleared.”

The patent application was filed on June 23, 2015 (15/501,278).

Storing, reading and modifying constant values
ARM Ltd., Cambridge, Great Britain, has been assigned a patent (11,416,251) developed by Ellis, Sean Tristram LeGuay, Farnham, Great Britain, and Booker, Andrew James, Ely, Great Britain, for an “apparatus for storing, reading and modifying constant values.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A data processing system utilizes non-volatile storage to store constant values. An instruction decoder decodes program instructions to generate control signals to control processing circuitry to perform processing operations which may include processing operations corresponding to constant-using program instructions. Such constant-using program instructions may include one or more operation specifying fields and one or more argument specifying fields which control the processing circuitry to generate an output value equal to that given by reading one or more constant values from the non-volatile storage, optionally modifying such a value, and then performing the processing operation upon the value, or the modified value, to generate an output value.”

The patent application was filed on November 16, 2017 (15/814,675).

Controlling eviction from storage structure
ARM Ltd., Cambridge, Great Britain, has been assigned a patent (11,397,680) developed by Pusdesris, Joseph Michael, Austin, TX, for “apparatus and method for controlling eviction from a storage structure.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A technique is provided for controlling eviction from a storage structure. An apparatus has a storage structure with a plurality of entries to store data. The apparatus also has eviction control circuitry configured to maintain eviction control information in accordance with an eviction policy, the eviction policy specifying how the eviction control information is to be updated in response to accesses to the entries of the storage structure. The eviction control circuitry is responsive to a victim selection event to employ the eviction policy to select, with reference to the eviction control information, one of the entries to be a victim entry whose data is to be discarded from the storage structure. The eviction control circuitry is further configured to maintain, for each of one or more groups of entries in the storage structure, an indication of a most-recent entry. The most-recent entry is an entry in that group that was most recently subjected to at least a given type of access. For each group, in response to an access to a given entry of that group other than the most-recent entry for that group, the eviction control circuitry is configured to update the eviction control information according to the eviction policy. However, in response to an access to the most-recent entry for that group, the eviction control circuitry is configured to prevent an update to at least the eviction control information associated with the most-recent entry.”

The patent application was filed on October 6, 2020 (17/064,019).

Secure configuration storage
ARM Ltd., Cambridge, Great Britain, has been assigned a patent (11,366,904) developed by Luff, Geraint, Grocutt, Thomas, Meriac, Milosch, Cambridge, Great Britain, and Austin, Jonathan, Oxford, Great Britain, for a “secure configuration data storage.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A machine-implemented method for controlling a configuration data item in a storage-equipped device having at least two security domains, comprising receiving, by one of the security domains, a configuration data item, storing the configuration data item, providing a security indication for the configuration data item, and when an event indicates untrustworthiness of the data item, invalidating a configuration effect of the stored configuration data item. Further provided is a machine-implemented method for controlling a storage-equipped device as a node in a network of devices, comprising receiving information that a data source or type of a configuration data item is untrusted, analysing metadata for the data source and the configuration data item, populating a knowledge base with analysed metadata, and responsive to the analysed metadata, transmitting security information to the network of devices. A corresponding device and computer program product are also described.”

The patent application was filed on August 1, 2016 (15/748,788).

Non-volatile storage circuitry accessible as primary storage for processing circuitry
ARM Ltd., Cambridge, Great Britain, has been assigned a patent (11,249,657) developed by Hinds, Christopher Neal, Beu, Jesse Garrett, Rico Carro, Alejandro, and Joao, Jose Alberto, Austin, TX, for a “non-volatile storage circuitry accessible as primary storage for processing circuitry.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Non-volatile storage circuitry is provided as primary storage accessible to processing circuitry, e.g. as registers, a cache, scratchpad memory, TLB or on-chip RAM. Power control circuitry powers down a given region of the non-volatile storage circuitry when information stored in said given region is not being used. This provides opportunities for more frequent power savings than would be possible if primary storage was implemented using volatile storage.”

The patent application was filed on July 10, 2019 (16/507,348).