Appeal No. 1998-2596
Application 08/522,222
reasons set forth in the main brief. The items in direct
cache 20 are placed there only in response to a reference by
the computer. Therefore, the items in victim cache 52, which
come from direct cache 20, have already been referenced by the
computer. The recitation in claim 1 “but not referenced by a
central processing unit” eliminates directly cached items from
consideration. Instead, the noted recitation from claim 1
requires that qualified instructions be prefetched, that is
not yet referenced by the computer. The instructions which
are prefetched in Jouppi are stored in a stream buffer 62.
These instructions are loaded into direct cache 20 if they are
subsequently referenced by the computer. However, these
instructions are discarded when additional instructions get
placed into the stream buffer [column 10, lines 24-49]. Claim
1
also recites that the instructions not referenced by the
computer are not “discarded upon replacing them by new ones in
a prefetch buffer.” Since the prefetch buffer 62 of Jouppi
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