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:
Mar. 14, 2006
Filed:
Sep. 03, 2003
Lawrence A. Spracklen, Boulder Creek, CA (US);
Stevan Vlaovic, Mountain View, CA (US);
Steven R. Hart, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Lawrence A. Spracklen, Boulder Creek, CA (US);
Stevan Vlaovic, Mountain View, CA (US);
Steven R. Hart, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus provides the capability for a single function to safely use multiple register windows within the same function, with minimal additional support from the operating system, by specifying a new window pointer, the 'Effective Current Window Pointer' (ECWP), to be used in conjunction with the prior art window pointer. According to the present invention, the new window pointer ECWP can be used to override the prior art window pointer in dictating from which register window the operands stipulated by the instructions to be executed are sourced/sinked. Consequently, using the method and apparatus of the invention, the number of spills to memory is reduced, the number of instructions required is decreased, resources are used more efficiently, and costly dependency problems and RAW (read-after-write) stalls are prevented.