MEMORY ACESS SYSTEM AND METHOD EMPLOYING AN AUXILIARY BUFFER

A buffering system attached to a memory for holding write-once, read-once data that is accessed by one or more peripheral devices. Data that is otherwise destined to be written to main memory is written, instead, into a storage buffer. The buffer is written using an address contained in a write pointer that is updated according to a predetermined pattern after the write operation. After updating the write pointer, if the address equals the read pointer, some or all of the buffer is flushed to the memory. Data is read from the buffer using an address contained in a read pointer that is updated according to the same predetermined pattern after the read operation. Any deviation from the pattern in either writing or reading the buffer causes the some or all of the buffer to be flushed to main memory and the read pointer to be updated accordingly.