International Business Machines Corporation

Other

Mark Joseph Hickey

Matthew Ray Tubbs

Charles David Wait

Adam James Muff

Robert Allen Shearer

Susan Marie Cox

Frederick Jacob Ziegler

Jack Chris Randolph

Dale John Thomforde

Bruce Leroy Beukema

Paul E Schardt

Eric Oliver Mejdrich

Stephen Joseph Schwinn

Robert Neill Newshutz

A particular method includes receiving, at a processor, an instruction and an address of the instruction. The method also includes preventing execution of the instruction based at least in part on determining that the address is within a range of addresses.

Instruction predication using instruction address pattern matching

A method maintains power usage prediction information for one or more functional units in branch prediction logic for a processing unit such that the power consumption of a functional unit may be selectively reduced in association with the execution of branch instructions when it is predicted that the functional unit will be idle subsequent to the execution of such branch instructions.

Branch prediction with power usage prediction and control

A circuit arrangement maintains power usage prediction information for one or more functional units in branch prediction logic for a processing unit such that the power consumption of a functional unit may be selectively reduced in association with the execution of branch instructions when it is predicted that the functional unit will be idle subsequent to the execution of such branch instructions.

A floating point execution unit is capable of selectively repurposing a subset of the significand bits in a floating point value for use as additional exponent bits to dynamically provide an extended range for floating point calculations. A significand field of a floating point operand may be considered to include first and second portions, with the first portion capable of being concatenated with the second portion to represent the significand for a floating point value, or, to provide an extended range, being concatenated with the exponent field of the floating point operand to represent the exponent for a floating point value.

Dynamic range adjusting floating point execution unit

A method and circuit arrangement speculatively preprocess data stored in a register file during otherwise unused cycles in an execution unit, e.g., to prenormalize denormal floating point values stored in a floating point register file, to decompress compressed values stored in a register file, to decrypt encrypted values stored in a register file, or to otherwise preprocess data that is stored in an unprocessed form in a register file.

Processing core with speculative register preprocessing in unused execution unit cycles

Due to the ever expanding number of registers and new instructions in modern microprocessor cores, the address widths present in the instruction encoding continue to widen, and fewer instruction opcodes are available, making it more difficult to add new instructions to existing architectures without resorting to inelegant tricks that have drawbacks such as source destructive operations. The disclosed invention utilizes specialized decode and address calculation hardware that concatenates a fixed number of least significant bits of the instruction address onto the most significant side of each register address portion contained in the instruction, yielding the full register address, instead of providing the full register address widths for every register used in the instruction. This frees up valuable opcode space for other instructions and avoids compiler complexity. This aligns nicely with how most loops are unrolled in assembly language, where independent operations are near each other in memory.

Opcode space minimizing architecture utilizing a least significant portion of an instruction address as upper register address bits

A floating point execution unit is capable of selectively repurposing one or more adders in an exponent path of the floating point execution unit to perform fixed point addition operations, thereby providing fixed point functionality in the floating point execution unit.

Floating point execution unit with fixed point functionality

A method, apparatus, and program product execute instructions of an instruction stream and detect logically non-significant operations in the instruction stream. Then, based on that detection, a target or source address of a subsequent instruction is adjusted. In some instances, doing so enables a greater number of addresses, e.g., registers, to be accessed in a given number of bit positions within an instruction format.

Detecting logically non-significant operation based on opcode and operand and setting flag to decode address specified in subsequent instruction as different address

A circuit arrangement and method utilize existing redundant execution pipelines in a processing unit to execute multiple instances of stability critical instructions in parallel so that the results of the multiple instances of the instructions can be compared for the purpose of detecting errors. For other types of instructions for which fault tolerant or stability critical execution is not required or desired, the redundant execution pipelines are utilized in a more conventional manner, enabling multiple non-stability critical instructions to be concurrently issued to and executed by the redundant execution pipelines. As such, for non-stability critical program code, the performance benefits of having multiple redundant execution units are preserved, yet in the instances where fault tolerant or stability critical execution is desired for certain program code, the redundant execution units may be repurposed to provide greater assurances as to the fault-free execution of such instructions.

Fault tolerant stability critical execution checking using redundant execution pipelines

A method includes receiving packed data corresponding to pixel components to be processed at a graphics pipeline. The method includes unpacking the packed data to generate floating point numbers that correspond to the pixel components. The method also includes routing each of the floating point numbers to a separate lane of the graphics pipeline. Each of the floating point numbers are to be processed by multiplier units of the graphics pipeline.

Performing vector multiplication

An integrated processor block of the network on a chip is programmable to perform a first function. The integrated processor block includes an inbox to receive incoming packets from other integrated processor blocks of a network on a chip, an outbox to send outgoing packets to the other integrated processor blocks, an on-chip memory, and a memory management unit to enable access to the on-chip memory.

Programmable integrated processor blocks

A logic arrangement and method to support implied storage operation decode uses redundant target address detection, whereby target addresses of previous instructions are compared with the target address of the current instruction, and if equal, and the target addresses of previous instructions are not used as sources, the current instruction is decoded as a store instruction. This allows a redundant operation in an instruction set architecture to be redefined as a store instruction, freeing up opcodes normally used for store instructions to be used for other instructions.

Growing community of inventors

Rochester, MN, United States of America

Mark Joseph Hickey