US Patent 6976147 Stride-based prefetch mechanism using a prediction confidence value

A prefetch mechanism includes a prefetch predictor table coupled to a prefetch control. The prefetch predictor table may include a plurality of locations configured to store a plurality of entries each indicative of a stride between a respective pair of memory requests. Each of the plurality of entries may be stored in a respective one of the plurality of locations dependent upon a value of an earlier stride. The prefetch control may be configured to prefetch an address based upon a given one of the plurality of entries in the prefetch predictor table.