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:
Jan. 13, 2004
Filed:
Jun. 27, 2000
Gregory S. Mathews, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Edward T. Grochowski, San Jose, CA (US);
Chih-Hung Chung, Saratoga, CA (US);
Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
An apparatus and method for reducing power consumption in a processor front end are provided. The processor includes an instruction cache, a TLB, and a branch predictor. For sequential code execution, the instruction cache is disabled unless the next instruction fetch will cross a cache line boundary, thus reducing unnecessary accesses to the instruction cache. The TLB is disabled unless the next instruction fetch will cross a page boundary, thus reducing unnecessary TLB look-ups. For code branching, the branch predictor is configured to include, for each target address, an indication of whether the target address is in the same page as the corresponding branch address. When a branch occurs so as to cause access to a given entry in the branch predictor, the TLB is disabled if the target address is in the same page as the branch address.