Patent attributes
There is provided an apparatus that includes an input port to receive, from a requester, any one of: a lookup operation comprising an input address, and a maintenance operation. Maintenance queue circuitry stores a maintenance queue of at least one maintenance operation and address storage stores a translation between the input address and an output address in an output address space. In response to receiving the input address, the output address is provided in dependence on the maintenance queue. In response to storing the maintenance operation, the maintenance queue circuitry causes an acknowledgement to be sent to the requester. By providing a separate maintenance queue for performing the maintenance operation, there is no need for a requester to be blocked while maintenance is performed.