Peripheral controller for executing multiple event-count instructions

Abstract

A typical peripheral system includes a control path and a data path along with a peripheral controller that processes different type of instructions for control and data paths. Since control and data paths are not independent of each other, it is necessary to either combine these two types of instructions in a single instruction or execute these two types of instructions in a prescribed manner so that a control path instruction can be executed while a data path instruction is being executed. The data path instructions (which may also be called event-count instructions) includes serialization and deserialization of data and other information such as ECC, and typically have lengths of events, or fields, typically in words and bytes associated with them. Control instructions (which may also be referred to as nonevent-count instructions) include setting of tag patterns, branching or jumping or typically have no fields of data associated with them. In the present invention, the peripheral controller can execute nonevent-count instructions before the end of a previous event-count instruction, and when a next event-count instruction is fetched, it must wait for the end of a previous event-count instruction before the new event-count instruction can be executed. In this way, all nonevent-count instructions between two event-count instructions, for both contiguous and noncontiguous event-count instructions, can be executed in sequence, and the timing dependencies between these two different types of instructions can be maintained.