Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Jorel D Hartman

Seungyoon Peter Song

John Gregory Favor

Laurent Rene Moll

Peter N Glaskowsky

Reducing power consumption in microprocessors for the processing of common values. Common values provided in at least one received operation are encoded into encoded common values having a lower number of bits than the common values prior to encoding. In one aspect, a separate encoding bus is used to provide the encoded common values in various processing of additional received operations in the microprocessor instead of a full-bit bus of the microprocessor, the encoding bus having less bits than the full-bit bus. In another aspect, a result of the operation is predicted based on at least one encoded common value and execution of the operation is bypassed.

Reducing power consumption for processing of common values in microprocessor registers and execution units

A software agent assembles prefetch hint instructions or prefixes defined in an instruction set architecture, the instructions/prefixes conveying prefetch hint information to a processor enabled to execute instructions according to the instruction set architecture. The prefetch hints are directed to control operation of one or more hardware memory prefetcher units included in the processor, providing for increased efficiency in memory prefetching operations. The hints may optionally provide any combination of parameters describing a memory reference traffic pattern to search for, when to begin searching, when to terminate prefetching, and how aggressively to prefetch. Thus the hardware prefetchers are enabled to make improved traffic prediction, providing more accurate results using reduced hardware resources. The hints may include any combination of specific pattern hints (one/two/N-dimensional strides, indirect, and indirect-stride), modifiers including sparse and region, and a prefetch-stop directive. The parameters may include any combination of a count, a priority and a ramp.

Growing community of inventors

San Jose, CA, United States of America

Jorel D Hartman