Apparatus and method for renaming registers in a processor and resolving data dependencies thereof
US5524262A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | May 17, 1995 |
| Grant date | Jun 4, 1996 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | May 17, 2015 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG06F9/3858
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A bypass mechanism within a register alias table unit (RAT) for handling source-destination dependencies between operands of a given set of operations issued simultaneously within a superscalar microproessor. Operations of the given set are presented in program order and data dependencies occur when a source register of particular operation is also utilizes as a destination register of a preceding operation within the given set of operations. At this occurence, the initial read of the RAT unit will not have supplied the most current rename of the source register. The present invention includes a comparison mechanism to detect this condition. Also included is a bypass mechanism for bypassing the physical source register output by the initial read of the RAT unit with a recently allocated physical destination register assigned to the preceding operation having the matched physical destination register. In general the RAT unit provides register renaming to provide a larger physical register set than would ordinarily be available within a given macroarchitecture's logical register set (such as the Intel architecture or PowerPC or Alpha designs, for instance) to eliminate false data dep…
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.