Patent · US Expired

Register rotation prediction and precomputation

US7051193B2 · kind B2 · utility

8Cited by
7References
34Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateMar 28, 2001
Grant dateMay 23, 2006
Priority date
Expiry dateNov 25, 2022

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F9/3842
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

Instruction-level parallelism in software pipelined loops is exploited by predicting future register rotations. A processor includes an architected current frame marker register and at least one unarchitected frame marker register. Register rotation prediction is achieved by setting the register rotation of future iterations of a software loop to be a function of the unarchitected frame marker registers. True data dependencies remain, but the dependencies caused solely by register renaming are removed. Dynamic predication is used to predicate instructions from future iterations, allowing them to be squashed if dependencies are later found. The register renaming that results from the prediction can be included in instructions in a buffer, or a renaming stage in an execution pipeline can perform the renaming.

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