Intel Corporation

Keshavram N Murty

Tessil Thomas

Nazar A Zaidi

Keshavan K Tiruvallur

Tse-Yu Yeh

Madhu S Athreya

Kiran A Padwekar

Richard J Glass

James A Stone

Darshana S Shah

A method is described that involves determining that software state information of program code is to be made visible to a monitoring system. The method also involves initiating the writing of the software state information into a register. The method also involves waiting for the software state information to be placed onto a link within a link based computing system.

Opportunistic transmission of software state information within a link based computing system

A method is described that involves within a link based computing system, opportunistically transmitting, into a network utilized by components of the link based computing system, one or more packets that contain computing system state information. The computing system state information includes software state information created through execution of software by said link based computing system. The method also involves collecting the computing system state information at a monitoring and/or debugging system attached to the link based computing system in order to analyze the link based computing system's operation.

Opportunistic transmission of computing system state information within a link based computing system

A system and method are described for detecting and recovering from self-modifying code (SMC) conflicts. In one embodiment, detection is accomplished by accessing the contents of a memory, configured to contain a number of recently executed instructions, to obtain an address. This address is compared to information propagating through a front-end pipeline of an instruction pipeline. The instruction pipeline includes the front-end pipeline to support loading and propagation of information through the instruction pipeline and a back-end pipeline to support execution of instructions along with writeback to the memory. If the address matches the information propagating through the front-end pipeline, a SMC conflict has occurred and at least some of the pipelined information is invalidated.

Apparatus and method for detecting and handling self-modifying code conflicts in an instruction fetch pipeline

A circuit and method for handling a hardware conflict experienced by a branch target buffer. The method for handling the hardware conflict includes three steps. First, a determination is made to detect whether there is a write allocation to a branch target buffer (BTB) cache. If so, precedence is given to the write allocation by invalidating at least a first instruction pointer within a BTB pipeline. The first instruction pointer would have been used to read information from the BTB cache for branch prediction, absent the write allocation. Thereafter, the first instruction pointer is recovered by reloading it into the BTB pipeline in order to avoid missing its opportunity to predict. The two cycle delay caused by the invalidation and recovery of the first instruction pointer has little effect on the performance level of the circuit practicing this method of operation.

System for recovering from a concurrent branch target buffer read with a

A system and method are described for maintaining synchronization of information propagating through multiple front-end pipelines operating in parallel. In general, these multiple front-end pipelines become asynchronous in response to a stall condition and re-establish synchronization by flushing both front-end pipelines as well as by selectively releasing these front-end pipelines from their stall condition at different periods of time.

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Phoenix, AZ, United States of America

Keshavram N Murty