Software managed memory hierarchy

A method, system, and apparatus are disclosed herein for bridging a deterministic phase of instructions with a non-deterministic phase of instructions when those instructions are executed by a machine learning accelerator while executing a machine learning network. Specifically, data is transferred from off-chip memory to on-chip memory (non-deterministic phase of instructions). The data transfer involves determining whether certain on-chip memory is already storing data that has not been consumed yet (e.g., certain memory locations on-chip may be storing data for future consumption and should not be overwritten). Based on determining that the certain on-chip memory is not storing data that has not been consumed yet, the data may be transferred from the off-chip memory to the on-chip memory and the target memory locations may be marked as storing data that has not been consumed yet. The deterministic phase of instructions may be started subsequently.