Patent · US Expired

System and method for fusing instructions

US6675376B2 · kind B2 · utility

34Cited by
8References
26Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateDec 29, 2000
Grant dateJan 6, 2004
Priority date
Expiry dateJul 3, 2022

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F9/3893
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A system and method for producing a fused instruction is described. In one embodiment, a first instruction and a second instruction that are both simple instructions (e.g., perform only one operation) and are dependent are fused together to create the fused instruction. The fused instruction has an opcode that represents the operation performed by the first instruction and the operation performed by the second instruction. The fused instruction has three source operands and one destination operand. Two of the three source operands are the two source operands of the first instruction, and the third source operand is the source operand of the second instruction that is not the destination operand of the first instruction. The destination operand of the fused instruction is the destination operand of the second instruction. An execution unit that can execute a fused instruction in one clock cycle is also disclosed. In one embodiment, the execution unit has two arithmetic logic units (“ALUs”), each of the ALUs performs one of the two operations of the fused instruction. The result of the first ALU is input into the second ALU to produce the desired result.

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