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. 19, 2010
Filed:
Feb. 20, 2007
Stephen Melvin, San Francisco, CA (US);
Mario D. Nemirovsky, Saratoga, CA (US);
Stephen Melvin, San Francisco, CA (US);
Mario D. Nemirovsky, Saratoga, CA (US);
MIPS Technologies, Inc., Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Abstract
A multi-streaming processor has a plurality of streams for streaming one or more instruction threads, a set of functional resources for processing instructions from streams, and a lock mechanism for locking selected memory locations shared by streams of the processor, the hardware-lock mechanism operating to set a lock when an atomic memory sequence is started and to clear a lock when an atomic memory sequence is completed. In preferred embodiments the lock mechanism comprises one or more storage locations associated with each stream of the processor, each storage location enabled to store a memory address a lock bit, and a stall bit. Methods for practicing the invention using the apparatus are also taught.