Marvell International Limited

Tzun-Wei Lee

Li Sha

Ching-Han Tsai

Chi-Kuang Chen

Haohong Wang

Shuhua Xiang

Leung Chung Lai

Tao Xie

Satish Kumar Vutukuri

In accordance with the teachings described herein, systems and methods are provided for advanced execution of branch instructions in a microprocessor pipeline. In one embodiment, a branch instruction of an assembly language program code is executed that includes (i) a condition operand, (ii) a branch destination operand, and (iii) a program count operand. It is determined whether a current program count matches a stored program count operand. After determining that a condition was met when the branch instruction was executed, and in response to determining that the current program count matches the stored program count operand, a destination instruction specified by the stored branch destination operand is fetched.

Early execution of conditional branch instruction with pc operand at which point target is fetched

Embodiments of the present invention provide graphic processing techniques and configurations including an apparatus comprising a storage medium having stored therein a table comprising information about respective positions and sizes of a number of rectangular blocks, the rectangular blocks to substantially form at least one plane having an arbitrary shape object, and at least one overlay engine operatively coupled with the table and associated with the at least one plane to request the information about the respective positions and the sizes of the number of rectangular blocks to provide graphics overlay of the arbitrary shape object. Other embodiments may be described and/or claimed.

Graphic processing techniques and configurations

In one embodiment the present invention includes a microprocessor that has a pipeline circuit, a branch circuit, and a control circuit. The pipeline circuit pipelines instructions for the microprocessor. The branch circuit is coupled to the pipeline circuit and operates to store branch information. The control circuit is coupled to the pipeline circuit and the branch circuit. The control circuit stores a first branch information from the pipeline circuit to the branch circuit when a first condition is met. The control circuit retrieves a second branch information from the branch stack circuit to the pipeline circuit when a second condition is met. In this manner, the need for dedicated pipeline flush circuitry is avoided.

Execution of conditional branch instruction specifying branch point operand to be stored in jump stack with branch destination for jumping to upon matching program counter value

Growing community of inventors

Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Tzun-Wei Lee