Patent · US Expired

Superword memory-access instructions for data processor

US7680990B2 · kind B2 · utility

1Cited by
25References
13Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateMay 30, 2003
Grant dateMar 16, 2010
Priority date
Expiry dateJul 10, 2024

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC G)Physics
  • CPC primaryG06F9/3834
  • WIPO fieldComputer technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

Atomic sixteen-byte memory accesses are provided in a 64-bit system in which eight of the bytes are stored in a 64-bit general-purpose register and eight of the bytes are stored in a 64-bit special-purpose register. A 16-byte load instruction transfers the low eight bytes to an explicitly specified general-purpose register, while the high eight bytes are transferred to the special-purpose register. Likewise, a 16-byte store instruction transfers data from a general-purpose register and the special-purpose register. Also provided is an 8-byte compare conditioning a 16-byte exchange semaphore instruction that can be used to accelerate algorithms that use multiple processors to simultaneously read and update large databases.

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