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:
Apr. 24, 2001
Filed:
Jul. 16, 1998
David C. Horton, Austin, TX (US);
Amit R. Gupta, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and circuit is provided for preloading a branch prediction unit within a microprocessor. In one embodiment of the method, a branch history storage device such as branch history shift register is written with a predetermined multibit predicter in response to the microprocessor receiving and executing a special write branch history storage device instruction for writing the predetermined multibit predicter into the branch history storage device. The branch history storage device is contained within a prediction circuit of the microprocessor, and generally the contents of the branch history storage device is used in the process of predicting the results of executing conditional branch instructions prior to their execution. Once the branch history storage device is preloaded with the predetermined multibit predicter, the prediction circuit predicts the result of a conditional branch instruction using the predetermined multibit predicter stored in the history device after the conditional branch instruction is received by the microprocessor and before the conditional branch instruction is executed. In one embodiment, the predetermined multibit predicter is an operand of the write history storage device instruction received and executed by the microprocessor.