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:
Oct. 27, 1998
Filed:
Nov. 29, 1995
James S Blomgren, San Jose, CA (US);
S3 Incorporated, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
Manufacturing yield is increased and cost lowered when a second, substantially identical CPU core is placed on a microprocessor die when the die contains a large cache. The large cache is shared among the two CPU cores. When one CPU core is defective, the large cache memory may be used by the other CPU core. Thus having two complete CPU cores on the die greatly increases the probability that the large cache can be used, and the manufacturing yield is therefore increased. When both CPU cores are functional, the die may be sold as a dual-processor. However, when no dual-processor chips are to be sold, the die are still manufactured as dual-processor die but packaged only as uni-processor chips. With the higher total yield of the dual-CPU die, the dual-CPU die may be packaged solely as uni-processor chips at lower cost than using uni-processor die. An on-chip ROM for generating test vectors, a floating point unit, and a bus-interface unit are also shared along with the large cache.