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:
Dec. 07, 1999
Filed:
Nov. 26, 1997
George Z Chrysos, Marlborough, MA (US);
Jeffrey Dean, Menlo Park, CA (US);
James E Hicks, Newton, MA (US);
Daniel L Leibholz, Cambridge, MA (US);
Edward J McLellan, Holliston, MA (US);
Carl A Waldspurger, Atherton, CA (US);
William E Weihl, San Francisco, CA (US);
Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, MA (US);
Abstract
An apparatus is provided for sampling instructions in a processor pipeline of a system. The pipeline has a plurality of processing stages. The apparatus includes a fetch unit for fetching instructions into a first stage of the pipeline. Certain randomly selected instructions are identified, and state information of the system is sampled while a particular selected instruction is in any stage of the pipeline. Software is informed when the particular selected instruction leaves the pipeline so that the software can read any of the sampled state information.