Integrated multilevel storage hierarchy for a data processing system with improved channel to memory write capability

Claim 1

In a data processing system including a processing unit, at least one channel connected to said processing unit, a first high speed, low capacity memory cache, a second lower speed, high capacity main memory and an input/output register interconnecting said cache and said processing unit, wherein data is stored in said main memory in the form of full words, each full word comprising a particular number of bytes and having an upper and lower boundary, and wherein data is stored in said cache in the form of cache pages each page comprising a plurality of full words, said channel providing input data for storage in said main memory, said input data being either in the form of full words whose boundaries correspond to boundaries of full words in said main memory or in the form of partial words which have less bytes than said particular number of bytes and the boundaries of which do not coincide with the boundaries of full words in main memory, improved channel to memory write means for storing information in said main memory in response to a partial channel write request wherein the data supplied by said channel and loaded into said I-O register includes a partial word whose boundaries do not coincide with the boundaries of a full word in said main memory, comprising: a swap buffer adapted to receive data from said input/output register and having at least one cache page storage capability; an error correction circuit and logic subassembly connected between said input/output register and said main memory, said subassembly adapted to receive data from said swap buffer; means responsive to a partial channel write request to determine if the data addressed by the channel write request is in said cache (a hit) or if the data addressed is not in said cache (a miss); first means responsive to a hit to generate a full word by retrieving the addressed data from the cache and supplementing the partial word from said partial channel write request with the data from the cache in said I-O register a plurality of bytes at a time; means responsive to said first means to transfer said full word generated by said first means to said main memory; second means responsive to a miss to release said IPU to load said partial word from said I-O register into said swap buffer to retrieve the addressed data from said main memory and to combine the data from said partial channel write stored in said swap buffer with data from main memory; in said error correction circuits and logic subassembly, and means responsive to said second means to store said combined full word to said main memory, whereby said IPU is available for executing instructions unrelated to channel data transfers, while information to complete partial channel write requests is being retrieved and while said data is being transferred from said swap buffer to said memory.