
2.7 Additional CPU Mechanisms 99
tents—hardware determines when values are added or removed from the
cache. Software-oriented schemes are an alternative way to manage close-in
memory.
scratch pads As shown in Figure 2-17, a scratch pad memory [Pan00] is located parallel
to the cache. However, the scratch pad does not include hardware to manage its
contents. The CPU can address the scratch pad to read and write it directly. The
scratch pad appears in a fixed part of the processor’s address space, such as the
lower range of addresses. The size of the scratch pad is chosen to fit on-chip and
provide a high-speed memory. Because the scratch pad is a part ...