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. 18, 2007
Filed:
May. 13, 2004
Hung Nguyen, Plano, TX (US);
Shannon Wichman, McKinney, TX (US);
Hung Nguyen, Plano, TX (US);
Shannon Wichman, McKinney, TX (US);
VeriSilicon Holdings (Cayman Islands) Co. Ltd., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
A hardware looping mechanism and method is described herein for handling any number and/or type of discontinuity instruction that may arise when executing program instructions within a scalar or superscalar processor. For example, the hardware looping mechanism may provide zero-overhead looping for branch instructions, in addition to single loop constructs and multiple loop constructs (which may or may not be nested). Zero-overhead looping may also be provided in special cases, e.g., when servicing an interrupt or executing a branch-out-of-loop instruction. In addition to reducing the number of instructions required to execute a program, as well as the overall time and power consumed during program execution, the hardware looping mechanism described herein may be integrated within any processor architecture without modifying existing program code.