CACHE EVICTION

A method and data processing apparatus comprise a cache having a plurality of data entries; an eviction buffer comprising an information portion and a data portion; and eviction logic to transfer information associated with a first of the plurality of data entries from the cache to the information portion and to determine, with reference to the information, whether the first of the plurality of data entries should be written to a memory by examining the information. If it is determined that the data entry should be written to the memory, the eviction logic (1) transfers the information from the eviction buffer to a bus coupled with the memory, (2)transfers data of the first of the plurality of data entries from the cache to a data portion of the eviction buffer, (3) transfers information associated with a second of the plurality of data entries from the cache to the associated portion of the eviction buffer such that the data stored by the data portion of the eviction buffer corresponds to the first of the plurality of data entries and the information stored by the data portion of the eviction buffer corresponds to the second of the plurality of data entries, and (4) transfers the data stored by the data portion of the eviction buffer to the bus. This approach provides a low-power, high performance technique for handling eviction requests.