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.

Date of Patent:
May. 09, 2000

Filed:

Dec. 12, 1997
Applicant:
Inventors:

Thang M Tran, Austin, TX (US);

Mauricio Calle, Austin, TX (US);

Shane Southard, Cedar Park, TX (US);

Assignee:

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);

Attorneys:
Primary Examiner:
Assistant Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G06F / ;
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
712-1 ; 712206 ; 712208 ; 712209 ; 710-1 ;
Abstract

A superscalar microprocessor predecodes instruction data to identify the boundaries of instructions and the type of instruction. To expedite the dispatch of instructions, when a cache line is scanned, the first scanned instruction is predicted to be a microcode instruction and is dispatched to the MROM unit. A microcode scan circuit uses the microcode pointer and the functional bits of the predecode data to multiplex instruction specific bytes of the first microcode instruction to the MROM unit. If the predicted first microcode instruction is not the actual first microcode instruction, then in a subsequent clock cycle, the actual microcode instruction is dispatched the MROM unit and the incorrectly predicted microcode instruction is canceled.


Find Patent Forward Citations

Loading…