Arm Limited

Kristof Evariste Georges Beyls

Richard William Earnshaw

James Greenhalgh

Scott Alan Douglass

There is provided input circuitry to receive input data. Output circuitry outputs a sequence of instructions to be executed by data processing circuitry. Generation circuitry performs a generation process to generate the sequence of instructions using the input data with at least some of the instructions being grouped into functions. The sequence of instructions comprises an indirect control flow instruction comprising a field that indicates where a target of the indirect control flow instruction is stored. The target is an entry point to one of the functions and the generation process causes at least one of the instructions in the sequence of instructions to store a state of control flow speculation after execution of the indirect control flow instruction.

Speculation with indirect control flow instructions

There is provided an apparatus including input circuitry that receives input data. Output circuitry outputs a sequence of instructions to be executed by data processing circuitry, at least some of the instructions being grouped into functions and generation circuitry performs a generation process to generate the sequence of instructions using the input data. The generation process causes at least one of the instructions in the sequence of instructions to store a state of control flow speculation performed during execution of the sequence of instructions and the stored state of control flow speculation is maintained between the functions.

Maintaining state of speculation between instruction functions

There is provided an apparatus that includes input circuitry to receive input data and output circuitry to output a sequence of instructions to be executed by data processing circuitry. Generation circuitry performs a generation process to generate the sequence of instructions using the input data. The sequence of instructions comprises an indirect control flow instruction having a field that indicates where a target of the indirect control flow instruction is stored. The generation process causes at least one of the instructions in the sequence of instructions to store a state of control flow speculation after execution of the indirect control flow instruction. The at least one of the instructions in the sequence of instructions that stores the state of control flow speculation is inhibited from being subject to data value speculation by the data processing circuitry.

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Ghent, Belgium

Kristof Evariste Georges Beyls