Koninklijke Philips Corporation N.v.

Nxp B.v.

Rudolf H J Bloks

Sunny C Huang

Frans Sijstermans

Kornelis Antonius Vissers

Lakshmi Rao

Marcel J A Tromp

Techniques are described for dynamically controlling the execution of operations within a multi-operation instruction, such as a very long instruction word (VLIW). A programmable processor fetches and executes a first instruction having an operation mask. Based on the operation mask, the processor selectively executes one or more operations within a second instruction. Individual operations within a multi-operation instruction can be selectively enabled and disabled, which is advantageous in many situations, including event handling and code debugging.

Dynamically controlling execution of operations within a multi-operation instruction

The invention is directed to techniques for managing a cache within a processor using one or more machine instructions. The machine instructions may perform one or more operations on the cache. For example, victimize instructions, allocate instructions, and pre-fetch instructions can be executed in the processor as part of cache management. Moreover, these various cache management instructions may be defined by one or more operands that specify memory addresses within main memory, rather than addresses or identifiers that define locations within the cache. For this reason, a programmer may invoke these cache management instructions to direct the management of the cache without knowing the specific location of data within the cache.

Cache management instructions

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Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Rudolf H J Bloks