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:
May. 15, 2001
Filed:
Mar. 25, 1999
Kenneth K. Munson, Saratoga, CA (US);
Peter C. Mills, San Jose, CA (US);
Rise Technology Company, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
Improvements are made in how microprocessors execute AND, OR, and TEST instructions when the operands of this instruction are equal. AND/OR/TEST instructions with equal operands are used to set flags based on the contents of the single operand without explicitly performing the actual AND/OR/TEST command. By resetting these flags directly, this mechanism allows these instructions to be paired with preceding dependent instructions simply by using the flags set by the AND/OR/TEST for the previous instruction. An architecture that hardwires the implementation into the microprocessor through logic gates is preferred. This will result in increased speed while reducing power consumption. Further, a full-sized ALU is not needed in order to execute the AND/OR/TEST instruction with equal operands. As this is a more direct procedure, a pipeline with a reduced capability ALU can be utilized.