The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 25, 1997
Filed:
Jan. 18, 1996
Frederic C Amerson, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Rajiv Gupta, Los Altos, CA (US);
Balasubramanian Kumar, Cupertino, CA (US);
Michael S Schlansker, Los Altos, CA (US);
William S Worley, Saratoga, CA (US);
Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
An improved data processing system for executing branch instructions which has lower latency times and which only rarely requires the instruction pipeline to be flushed is disclosed. The data processing system utilizes a register file to hold the information needed to execute a branch instruction. The information is loaded into the register file in advance of the branch instruction. This allows the system to prepare more than one branch instruction at any given time. The present invention may be used to cause the cache line containing the target address of the branch instruction to be loaded soon as the target address is available for the branch instruction. Since the outcome of the branch instruction is almost always known when the branch instruction enters the instruction pipeline, the instruction pipeline only rarely needs to be flushed.