Intel IA-32 - Manual (Page 463)

Vol. 3A 10-23
MEMORY CACHE CONTROL
cache hierarchy now or as soon as possible, in anticipation of its use. The instructions provide
different variations of the hint that allow selection of the cache level into which data will be read.
The PREFETCHh instructions can help reduce the long latency typically associated with reading
data from memory and thus help prevent processor “stalls.” However, these instructions should
be used judiciously. Overuse can lead to resource conflicts and hence reduce the performance of
an application. Also, these instructions should only be used to prefetch data from memory; they
should not be used to prefetch instructions. For more detailed information on the proper use of
the prefetch instruction, refer to Chapter 6, “Optimizing Cache Usage,” in the IA-32 Intel®
Architecture Optimization Reference Manual.
10.9 INVALIDATING THE TRANSLATION LOOKASIDE BUFFERS
(TLBS)
The processor updates its address translation caches (TLBs) transparently to software. Several
mechanisms are available, however, that allow software and hardware to invalidate the TLBs
either explicitly or as a side effect of another operation.
The INVLPG instruction invalidates the TLB for a specific page. This instruction is the most
efficient in cases where software only needs to invalidate a specific page, because it improves
performance over invalidating the whole TLB. This instruction is not affected by the state of the
G flag in a page-directory or page-table entry.
The following operations invalidate all TLB entries except global entries. (A global entry is one
for which the G (global) flag is set in its corresponding page-directory or page-table entry. The
global flag was introduced into the IA-32 architecture in the P6 family processors, see Section
10.5, “Cache Control”.)
•
Writing to control register CR3.
•
A task switch that changes control register CR3.
The following operations invalidate all TLB entries, irrespective of the setting of the G flag:
•
Asserting or de-asserting the FLUSH# pin.
•
(Pentium 4, Intel Xeon, and P6 family processors only.) Writing to an MTRR (with a
WRMSR instruction).
•
Writing to control register CR0 to modify the PG or PE flag.
•
(Pentium 4, Intel Xeon, and P6 family processors only.) Writing to control register CR4 to
modify the PSE, PGE, or PAE flag.
See Section 3.12, “Translation Lookaside Buffers (TLBs),” for additional information about the
TLBs.