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:
Sep. 30, 2003
Filed:
Nov. 09, 2000
G. William Walster, Cupertino, CA (US);
Dmitri Chiriaev, Campbell, CA (US);
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates performing a mask-driven multiplication operation between arithmetic intervals within a computer system. The system first receives interval operands, including a first interval and a second interval, to be multiplied together to produce a resulting interval. Next, the system uses the operand values to create a mask. The system uses this mask to perform a multi-way branch to the code for the interval operands. In one embodiment of the present invention, creating the mask additionally involves: determining whether the first interval and/or second intervals are empty, and modifying the mask so the multi-way branch directs the execution flow of the program to appropriate code for this case. In one embodiment of the present invention, if the first interval is empty or if the second interval is empty, the multi-way branch directs the execution flow of the program to code that sets the resulting interval to be empty.