Advanced Micro Devices Corporation

Daniel Nikolai Peroni

Pramod Vasant Argade

Swapnil Pradipkumar Sakharshete

A processing system selectively enables and disables a result lookaside buffer (RLB) based on a hit rate tracked by a counter, thereby reducing power consumption for lookups at the result lookaside buffer during periods of low hit rates and improving the overall hit rate for the result lookaside buffer. A controller increments the counter in the event of a hit at the RLB and decrements the counter in the event of a miss at the RLB. If the value of the counter falls below a threshold value, the processing system temporarily disables the RLB for a programmable period of time. After the period of time, the processing system re-enables the RLB and resets the counter to an initial value.

Selectively enabled result lookaside buffer based on a hit rate

A processor selectively adjusts the precision of data for different functional units. Specified functional units of the processor, such as shader processing unit of a graphics processing unit (GPU) include a zeroing module to store, based on the states of corresponding precision flags, a data value of zero at specified portion of an input and/or output data operand. The functional unit then processes the data including the zeroed portion. Because a portion of the data has been zeroed, the functional unit consumes less power during data processing. Furthermore, the precision flags are set such that the reduced precision of the data does not significantly impact a user experience.

Variable precision computing system

Techniques are disclosed for compressing data. The techniques include identifying, in data to be compressed, a first set of values, wherein the first set of values include a first number of two or more consecutive identical non-zero values; including, in compressed data, a first control value indicating the first number of non-zero values and a first data item corresponding to the consecutive identical non-zero values; identifying, in the data to be compressed, a second value having an exponent value included in a defined set of exponent values; including, in the compressed data, a second control value indicating the exponent value and a second data item corresponding to a portion of the second value other than the exponent value; and including, in the compressed data, a third control value indicating a third set of one or more consecutive zero values in the data to be compressed.

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San Diego, CA, United States of America

Daniel Nikolai Peroni