Patent 7966457 was granted and assigned to Microchip Technology on June, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A cache module for a central processing unit has a cache control unit coupled with a memory, and a cache memory coupled with the control unit and the memory wherein the cache memory has a plurality of cache lines, each cache line having a storage area for storing instructions to be issued sequentially and associated control bits, wherein at least one cache line of the plurality of cache lines has at least one branch trail control bit which when set provides for an automatic locking function of the cache line in case a predefined branch instruction has been issued.