Reservation station for a floating point processing unit
US5878266A · kind A · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Sep 26, 1995 |
| Grant date | Mar 2, 1999 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Sep 26, 2015 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH03M7/24
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A reservation station with format conversion logic enables the implementation of a superscalar computer processing system which incorporates both a floating point functional unit and non-floating point functional units. By converting operand data in a floating point reservation station from external formats to an internal floating point format, a system incorporating such a floating point reservation station enables the representation of operand data in uniform external formats outside floating point arithmetic units (e.g., in a reorder buffer, on operand and result busses, and within non-floating functional units) while also enabling the use of a specialized internal representation (internal floating point format) within floating point arithmetic units. A system incorporating multiple functional units and such a floating point reservation station enables the use of superscalar techniques for exploiting parallelism between floating point and non-floating point instructions because operands and results are externally represented in uniform external formats. Specialized logic within the floating point reservation station converts operand formats.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.