Intel Corporation

Jonathan Cannon Hall

Andrew Thomas Forsyth

Christopher J Hughes

Brian J Hickmann

Robert Valentine

Milind Baburao Girkar

Jeffrey G Wiedemeier

Mark Jay Charney

Bret L Toll

Dennis Ryan Bradford

Jesus Corbal

Elmoustapha Ould-Ahmed-Vall

Edward Thomas Grochowski

Robert Dale Cavin

Suleyman Sair

Seth Abraham

Charles R Yount

Jesus Corbal San Adrian

Sridhar Samudrala

James Charles Abel

Lisa K Wu

Roger Espasa Sans

Santiago Galan Duran

Gilbert A Neiger

Jason W Brandt

Martin Guy Dixon

Srinivas Chennupaty

Rajesh S Parthasarathy

Chris J Newburn

Mark J Buxton

Peter Lachner

Roger Gramunt

Mayank Bomb

Yen-Kuang (y K) Chen

Hideki (Saito) Ido

Benjamin C Chaffin

Amit Gradstein

Christopher B Wilkerson

Thomas D Fletcher

Yen-Kuang Chen

Sailesh Kottapalli

Aditya Kesiraju

Ramon Matas

Dror Markovich

Seth H Pugsley

Hideki Ido

Chung-Lun Chan

Taraneh Bahrami

Mark Charney

Rohan Sharma

Prabhat Jain

Thomas B Maciukenas

Robert C Valentine

According to one embodiment, a processor includes an instruction decoder to decode a first instruction to gather data elements from memory, the first instruction having a first operand specifying a first storage location and a second operand specifying a first memory address storing a plurality of data elements. The processor further includes an execution unit coupled to the instruction decoder, in response to the first instruction, to read contiguous a first and a second of the data elements from a memory location based on the first memory address indicated by the second operand, and to store the first data element in a first entry of the first storage location and a second data element in a second entry of a second storage location corresponding to the first entry of the first storage location.

Coalescing adjacent gather/scatter operations

A vector friendly instruction format and execution thereof. According to one embodiment of the invention, a processor is configured to execute an instruction set. The instruction set includes a vector friendly instruction format. The vector friendly instruction format has a plurality of fields including a base operation field, a modifier field, an augmentation operation field, and a data element width field, wherein the first instruction format supports different versions of base operations and different augmentation operations through placement of different values in the base operation field, the modifier field, the alpha field, the beta field, and the data element width field, and wherein only one of the different values may be placed in each of the base operation field, the modifier field, the alpha field, the beta field, and the data element width field on each occurrence of an instruction in the first instruction format in instruction streams.

Vector friendly instruction format and execution thereof

Methods and apparatus are disclosed for accessing multiple data cache lines for scatter/gather operations. Embodiment of apparatus may comprise address generation logic to generate an address from an index of a set of indices for each of a set of corresponding mask elements having a first value. Line or bank match ordering logic matches addresses in the same cache line or different banks, and orders an access sequence to permit a group of addresses in multiple cache lines and different banks. Address selection logic directs the group of addresses to corresponding different banks in a cache to access data elements in multiple cache lines corresponding to the group of addresses in a single access cycle. A disassembly/reassembly buffer orders the data elements according to their respective bank/register positions, and a gather/scatter finite state machine changes the values of corresponding mask elements from the first value to a second value.

Processor and method for tracking progress of gathering/scattering data element pairs in different cache memory banks

According to a first aspect, efficient data transfer operations can be achieved by: decoding by a processor device, a single instruction specifying a transfer operation for a plurality of data elements between a first storage location and a second storage location; issuing the single instruction for execution by an execution unit in the processor; detecting an occurrence of an exception during execution of the single instruction; and in response to the exception, delivering pending traps or interrupts to an exception handler prior to delivering the exception.

Gathering and scattering multiple data elements

A processor includes an instruction schedule and dispatch (schedule/dispatch) unit to receive a single instruction multiple data (SIMD) instruction to perform an operation on multiple data elements stored in a storage location indicated by a first source operand. The instruction schedule/dispatch unit is to determine a first of the data elements that will not be operated to generate a result written to a destination operand based on a second source operand. The processor further includes multiple processing elements coupled to the instruction schedule/dispatch unit to process the data elements of the SIMD instruction in a vector manner, and a power management unit coupled to the instruction schedule/dispatch unit to reduce power consumption of a first of the processing elements configured to process the first data element.

Vector mask driven clock gating for power efficiency of a processor

A processor includes a set associative cache and a cache controller. The cache controller makes an initial association between first and second groups of sampled sets in the cache and first and second cache replacement policies. Follower sets in the cache are initially associated with the more conservative of the two policies. Following cache line insertions in a first epoch, the associations between the groups of sampled sets and cache replacement policies are swapped for the next epoch. If the less conservative policy outperforms the more conservative policy during two consecutive epochs, the follower sets are associated with the less conservative policy for the next epoch. Subsequently, if the more conservative policy outperforms the less conservative policy during any epoch, the follower sets are again associated with the more conservative policy. Performance may be measured based the number of cache misses associated with each policy.

System and method for cache replacement using conservative set dueling

A method of an aspect includes receiving an instruction indicating a first source packed memory indices, a second source packed data operation mask, and a destination storage location. Memory indices of the packed memory indices are compared with one another. One or more sets of duplicate memory indices are identified. Data corresponding to each set of duplicate memory indices is loaded only once. The loaded data corresponding to each set of duplicate memory indices is replicated for each of the duplicate memory indices in the set. A packed data result in the destination storage location in response to the instruction. The packed data result includes data elements from memory locations that are indicated by corresponding memory indices of the packed memory indices when not blocked by corresponding elements of the packed data operation mask.

Processing memory access instructions that have duplicate memory indices

An apparatus and method for efficiently managing the architectural state of a processor. For example, one embodiment of a processor comprises: a source mask register to be logically subdivided into at least a first portion to store a usable portion of a mask value and a second portion to store an indication of whether the usable portion of the mask value has been updated; a control register to store an unusable portion of the mask value; architectural state management logic to read the indication to determine whether the mask value has been updated prior to performing a store operation, wherein if the mask value has been updated, then the architectural state management logic is to read the usable portion of the mask value from the first portion of the source mask register and zero out bits of the unusable portion of the mask value to generate a final mask value to be saved to memory, and wherein if the mask value has not been updated, then the architectural state management logic is to concatenate the usable portion of the mask value with the unusable portion of the mask value read from the control register to generate a final mask value to be saved to memory.

Method and apparatus for efficiently managing architectural register state of a processor

Growing community of inventors

Hillsboro, OR, United States of America

Jonathan Cannon Hall