Patent · US Expired

Pipelined apparatus and method for controlled loading of floating point data in a microprocessor

US5155816A · kind A · utility

157Cited by
14References
21Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventor

Key dates

Filing dateAug 8, 1991
Grant dateOct 13, 1992
Priority date
Expiry dateAug 8, 2011

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F15/8069
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A microprocessor having a pipelined architecture, an onchip data cache, a floating-point unit, a floating-point data latch and an instruction for accessing infrequently used data from an external memory system is disclosed. The instruction comprises a first-in-first-out memory for accumulating data in a pipeline manner, a first circuit means for coupling data from the external bus to the first-in-first-out memory and a second circuit means for transferring the data stored in the first-in-first-out memory to the floating-point data latch. The second circuit means also couples data from the cache to the first-in-first-out memory in the event of a cache hit. Finally, a bus control means is provided for controlling the orderly flow of data in accordance with the architecture of the microprocessor.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.