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:
Feb. 18, 2000
Stephen Undy, Fort Collins, CO (US);
James E. McCormick, Jr., Fort Collins, CO (US);
Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P., Houston, TX (US);
Abstract
An apparatus for and a method of decoupling at least two multi-stage pipelines are described. At least two paths of data through which data from the first pipeline is send to the second pipeline are provided. During a pipelined execution of a task in the at least two pipelines, the second pipeline may not require every data produced in the first pipeline to process at least some subset of the task. The first pipeline may not be able to produce all data required by each of the stages of the second pipeline. One of the two data paths provides an early data path for a type of data that becomes available in a stage of the first pipeline and that may be processed in a stage of the second pipeline early in time. The other of the two data paths provides a late data path for a type of data that becomes available in a stage of the first pipeline and that may be processed in a stage of the second pipeline later in time. Each data path may comprise a buffer, e.g., a FIFO.