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. 14, 2002
Filed:
Oct. 17, 2000
Naohiko Irle, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Tony Lee Werner, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Hitachi, Ltd., Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
A processor is provided with an improved instruction buffer, branch target instruction memory, branch target address memory and instruction decoder adapted for handling branch instructions so as to reduce latencies. A branch operation uses both a program branch control instruction (executed in advance to determine the branch target instruction address) and either a conditional or unconditional branch instruction associated with a conditional/unconditional branch target instruction respectively. The conditional/unconditional branch instruction and the program branch control instruction both include separate prediction indicators used by the instruction decoder for initiating a loading and speculatively pre-loading of instructions for execution in the processor.