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:
Nov. 10, 1998
Filed:
Apr. 30, 1996
Jeffrey B Caldwell, Sunnyville, CA (US);
Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
The present invention describes a system and method to efficiently implement case table constructs for integral datatypes larger than the native underlying register size of the architecture. The method for generating case table constructs for a n-bit case variable on a computer system having a m-bit architecture, where n is greater than m, includes the step of determining whether the n-bit case variable can be represented in m bits. Since the code for a m-bit case variable is more efficient than the code for a n-bit case variable, the present invention determines which case variables require code for n-bit values and which case variables can be implemented in the more efficient code for m-bit values. If the case variable can be reduced to m-bits then the present invention uses the more efficient m-bit case variable code for implementation. Otherwise, the less efficient n-bit case variable code is used. The invention describes an efficient method for performing this test at runtime.