A computer-implemented method includes the following operations. A transactional lock elision transaction including a critical section is executed. The critical section is processed. After the processing of the critical section and prior to a commit point in the transactional lock elision transaction, a status of a lock is checked. Responsive to a determination that a status of the lock is free, a result of the transactional lock elision transaction is committed.

Technologies for secure I/O include a compute device, which further includes a processor, a memory, a trusted execution environment (TEE), one or more input/output (I/O) devices, and an I/O subsystem. The I/O subsystem includes a device memory access table (DMAT) programmed by the TEE to establish bindings between the TEE and one or more I/O devices that the TEE trusts and a memory ownership table (MOT) programmed by the TEE when a memory page is allocated to the TEE.

A conditional direct memory access (DMA) channel activation system for executing a complex data transfer in a system-on-chip, comprising: a look-up table constructed and arranged to store elements of an activation profile; and a trigger circuit that controls a DMA transaction according to the activation profile of the look-up table.

A deep neural network (“DNN”) module can compress and decompress neuron-generated activation data to reduce the utilization of memory bus bandwidth. The compression unit can receive an uncompressed chunk of data generated by a neuron in the DNN module. The compression unit generates a mask portion and a data portion of a compressed output chunk. The mask portion encodes the presence and location of the zero and non-zero bytes in the uncompressed chunk of data. The data portion stores truncated non-zero bytes from the uncompressed chunk of data. A decompression unit can receive a compressed chunk of data from memory in the DNN processor or memory of an application host. The decompression unit decompresses the compressed chunk of data using the mask portion and the data portion. This can reduce memory bus utilization, allow a DNN module to complete processing operations more quickly, and reduce power consumption.

Techniques for implementing hardware-assisted memory disaggregation with recovery from network failures/problems are provided. In one set of embodiments, a hardware controller of a computer system can maintain a copy of a “remote memory” of the computer system (i.e., a section of the physical memory address space of the computer system that maps to a portion of the physical system memory of a remote computer system) in a local backup memory. The backup memory may be implemented using a non-volatile memory that is slower, but also less expensive, than conventional dynamic random-access memory (DRAM). Then, if the hardware controller is unable to retrieve data in the remote memory from the remote computer system within a specified time window due to, e.g., a network failure or other problem, the hardware controller can retrieve the data from the backup memory, thereby avoiding a hardware error condition (and potential application/system crash).

Methods, apparatus, and system to identify a memory contention with respect to a process, re-write the process to form a transactional process, and execute the transactional process in a speculative execution.

Methods and apparatuses relating to hardware transactions are described. In one embodiment, a processor includes one or more cores to concurrently execute a plurality of transactions, and a hardware transactional circuit to detect an occurrence of a software selected precursor in any of the plurality of transactions and abort at least one of the plurality of transactions on the occurrence unless an interface to software indicates the occurrence is to not cause an abort, wherein the occurrence is not a memory access of shared data by the plurality of transactions.

Restricted instructions are prohibited from execution within a transaction. There are classes of instructions that are restricted regardless of type of transaction: constrained or nonconstrained. There are instructions only restricted in constrained transactions, and there are instructions that are selectively restricted for given transactions based on controls specified on instructions used to initiate the transactions.

A deferral instruction associated with a transaction is executed in a transaction execution computing environment with transactional memory. Based on executing the deferral instruction, a processor sets a defer-state indicating that pending disruptive events such as interrupts or conflicting memory accesses are to be deferred. A pending disruptive event is deferred based on the set defer-state, and the transaction is completed based on the disruptive event being deferred. The progress of the transaction may be monitored during a deferral period. The length of such deferral period may be specified by the deferral instruction. Whether the deferral period has expired may be determined based on the monitored progress of the transaction. If the deferral period has expired, the transaction may be aborted and the disruptive event may be processed.

In a multi-processor transaction execution environment a transaction is executed a plurality of times. Based on the executions, a duration is predicted for executing the transaction. Based on the predicted duration, a threshold is determined. Pending aborts of the transaction due to memory conflicts are suppressed based on the transaction exceeding the determined threshold.