International Business Machines Corporation

Stefan Payer

Cedric Lichtenau

Razvan Peter Figuli

Kerstin Claudia Schelm

Michael Klein

Petra Leber

Michael B Kugel

Wolfgang Penth

Eric M Schwarz

Juergen Pille

Tobias Werner

Juergen Haess

Nicol Hofmann

Jonathan D Bradbury

Anthony Saporito

Silvia Melitta Mueller

Yuen H Chan

Cédric Lichtenau

Timothy John Slegel

Christian Jacobi

Chung-Lung K Shum

Alper Buyuktosunoglu

William Vincent Huott

Gregory William Alexander

Adam B Collura

Reid T Copeland

Rolf Sautter

Tobias Webel

Michael J Cadigan, Jr

Raphael C Polig

Pawel Owczarczyk

Xin Guo

Sean Michael Carey

Ralf Richter

Philipp Salz

Lior Binyamini

Karl Evan Smock Anderson

Paul Jacob Logsdon

Osama Dengler

Michael Romain

Ido Rozenberg

Revital Arieli

Mark Cichanowski

Eric Mark Schwarz

Rounding hexadecimal floating point numbers using binary incrementors, including: incrementing, by a first incrementor, a first subset of bits of an operand comprising a binary hexadecimal floating point operand; incrementing, by a second incrementor, a second subset of bits of the operand; generate an intermediate result based on a carryout of the second incrementor; and generate an incremented result based on a carryout of the first incrementor and one or more of: a first bit of the intermediate result or the carryout of the second incrementor.

Rounding hexadecimal floating point numbers using binary incrementors

Verifying the correctness of a leading zero counter, including: generating, based on an input value comprising a plurality of digits, a first bit vector, wherein each entry of the first bit vector indicates whether a corresponding digit of the input value is equal to zero; calculating, based on the first bit vector, a leading zero count for the input value; generating a bit mask comprising a number of leading ones equal to the leading zero count; generating a second bit vector comprising a one at a same index as a first occurring zero in the bit mask; and verifying the leading zero count based on the first bit vector and one or more of the bit mask and the second bit vector.

Verifying the correctness of a leading zero counter

The method and systems described herein provide for identifying and mitigating undesirable power or voltage fluctuations in regions of a semiconductor device. For example, embodiments include detecting a region, such as an individual processor, of a processor chip is exhibiting a reduced power draw and a resulting localized voltage spike (e.g., a spike that exceeds Vmax) that would accelerate overall device end-of-life (EOL). The described systems respond by activating circuits or current generators located in the given region to draw additional power via a protective current. The protective current lowers the local voltages spikes back to within some pre-specified range (e.g., below a Vmax). The resulting reduction in the time above Vmax in testing reduces the number of devices that will need to be discarded due to Vmax violations as well as increases the expected reliability and lifespan of the device in operation.

Method to limit the time a semiconductor device operates above a maximum operating voltage

An instruction is provided for performing a vector string search. The instruction to be processed is obtained, with the instruction being defined to be a string search instruction to locate occurrence of a substring within a string. The instruction is processed, with the processing including searching the string specified in one operand of the instruction using the substring specified in another operand of the instruction. Based on the searching locating a first full match of the substring within the string, a full match condition indication is returned with position of the first full match in the string, and based on the searching locating only a partial match of the substring at a termination of the string, a partial match condition indication is returned, with the position of the partial match in the string.

Vector string search instruction

An instruction to perform an operation selected from a plurality of operations configured for the instruction is executed. The executing includes determining a value of a selected operand of the instruction. The determining the value is based on a control of the instruction and includes reading the selected operand of the instruction from a selected operand location to obtain the value of the selected operand, based on the control having a first value, and using a predetermined value as the value of the selected operand, based on the control having a second value. The value and another selected operand of the instruction are multiplied to obtain a product. An arithmetic operation is performed using the product and a chosen operand of the instruction to obtain an intermediate result. A result from the intermediate result is obtained and placed in a selected location.

Hexadecimal floating point multiply and add instruction

A method of performing instruction scheduling during execution in a processor includes receiving, at an execution unit of the processor, an initial assignment of an assigned execution resource among two or more execution resources to execute an operation. An instruction includes two or more operations. Based on determining that the assigned execution resource is not available, the method also includes determining, at the execution unit, whether another execution resource among the two or more execution resources is available to execute the operation. Based on determining that the other execution resource is available, the method further includes executing the operation with the other execution resource.

Instruction scheduling during execution in a processor

Embodiments of the invention are directed to a computer-implemented method of for parallel conversion to binary coded decimal format. The method includes receiving, by a floating point unit (FPU), a value in binary floating point (BFP) format. The BFP value includes an integer part and a fractional part. The FPU converts the BFP value to a binary coded decimal (BCD) value. In parallel to converting the BFP value to a BCD value, the FPU performs a rounding operation on the BFP value. The FPU receives the rounding information and operates on the BCD value accordingly.

Parallel rounding for conversion from binary floating point to binary coded decimal

A computer-implemented method includes: receiving, using a processor, a decimal floating point number; and using a floating point unit within the processor to convert the decimal floating point number into a binary coded decimal number, wherein the floating point unit starts a conversion loop subsequent to a rounding loop starting, wherein the rounding loop and the conversion loop run in parallel once started.

Parallelized rounding for decimal floating point to binary coded decimal conversion

A method is provided. The method is executable by a processor. The method includes receiving, by an instruction issue unit of the processor as an input, a preferred instruction variant from an instruction variant selection logic. The method includes executing, by an execution unit of the processor, the preferred instruction variant. The method includes providing, by the execution unit of the processor, quality feedback to the instruction variant selection logic and evaluating, by the instruction variant selection logic of the processor, the preferred instruction variant based on the quality feedback.

Cognitive binary coded decimal to binary number conversion hardware for evaluating a preferred instruction variant based on feedback

A method includes obtaining a trigger signal directed to a component in a subset of components of an electronic circuit, and activating a clock corresponding with the subset of components of the electronic circuit for a preliminary period in response to the trigger signal. An active period is determined based on the trigger signal. The clock remains active for the active period. One of a timer or counter is initiated for the active period. A limit is defined for the one of the timer or counter. The active period is dynamically extended for a busy period after the one of the timer or counter is initiated. The clock is deactivated following the active period.

Fault-tolerant clock gating

A method for detecting faults in substring search operations includes providing, using a processor unit including vector registers of M vector elements each, an M&#xd7;M matrix of comparators for characterwise comparison of the elements of a reference string stored in a first one of the vector registers and a target string stored in a second one of the vector registers. A vector element is an n-bit element for encoding a character. A resulting bit vector is generated using comparison performed by the M&#xd7;M matrix. The resulting bit vector indicates characters of the target string that fully match the reference string and indicates characters of the target string that partially match the reference string. Fault detection in the substring search operations is performed by utilizing the resulting bit vector.

Plausability-driven fault detection in result logic and condition codes for fast exact substring match

A method for detecting faults in substring search operations using a processor unit including vector registers of M vector elements each. A non-limiting example of the method includes providing an M&#xd7;M matrix of comparators for characterwise comparison of the elements of a reference string and a target string. A first zero detect vector having value indicative of terminating element of the target string and a second zero detect vector having a value indicative of terminating element of the reference string are generated. A resulting bit vector is generated using comparison performed by the M&#xd7;M matrix. The resulting bit vector indicates characters of the target string that fully match the reference string and indicate characters of the target string that partially match the reference string. Fault detection in the substring search operations is performed by comparing the generated zero detect vectors with operands.

Plausibility-driven fault detection in string termination logic for fast exact substring match

A system, apparatus, and method of testing a plurality of test circuits is disclosed that includes inputting experiment data to the plurality of test circuits; applying a control signal to each of the plurality of test circuits to control application of the experiment data to the plurality of test circuits; and shifting the control signal in response to applying the control signal to each of the plurality of test circuits so that a different bit of the control signal is applied to each of the plurality of test circuits. The method in an aspect further comprises reading out a data out signal from each of the plurality of test circuits; and shifting the data out signal in response to reading out the data out signal from each of the plurality of test circuits.

Method and apparatus for wiring multiple technology evaluation circuits

Aspects include parsing, by a computer system, a design file of an integrated circuit including a plurality of stages to extract a plurality of inputs and outputs of a plurality of latches. The computer system can sort the latches based on latch locations in the stages and build a plurality of ordered vectors of signals before and after the latches based on the sorting. The computer system can build a plurality of parity vectors for each of the ordered vectors of signals before and after the latches, build a latch bank for each of the parity vectors before the latches, and build a parity vector comparison to detect a parity failure based on comparing the parity vectors after the latches with an output of the latch bank.

Integrated circuit control latch protection

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Stuttgart, Germany

Stefan Payer