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. 23, 2006
Filed:
Oct. 26, 2001
Blaine D. Gaither, Fort Collins, CO (US);
Robert J Brooks, Fort Collins, CO (US);
Blaine D. Gaither, Fort Collins, CO (US);
Robert J Brooks, Fort Collins, CO (US);
Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P., Houston, TX (US);
Abstract
In processing an instruction request, the invention determines whether the request is speculative or not based upon a bit field within the instruction. If the request is speculative, bus congestion and/or target memory is assessed for conditions and a decision is made, based on the conditions, as to whether or not to process the request. To facilitate the invention, certain bit fields within the instruction are encoded to identify the request as speculative or not. Additional bit fields may define a priority of a speculative request to influence the decision to process as based on the conditions. CPU architectures incorporating prefetch logic may be modified to recognize instructions encoded with speculation and priority identification fields to implement the invention in existing systems. Other logic, e.g., bus controllers and switches, may similarly process speculative requests to enhance system performance.