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:
Jul. 24, 2012
Filed:
Apr. 07, 2005
Matteo Frigo, Austin, TX (US);
Ahmed Gheith, Round Rock, TX (US);
Volker Strumpen, Austin, TX (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A method and processor architecture for achieving a high level of concurrency and latency hiding in an 'infinite-thread processor architecture' with a limited number of hardware threads is disclosed. A preferred embodiment defines 'fork' and “join” instructions for spawning new context-switched threads. Context switching is used to hide the latency of both memory-access operations (i.e., loads and stores) and arithmetic/logical operations. When an operation executing in a thread incurs a latency having the potential to delay the instruction pipeline, the latency is hidden by performing a context switch to a different thread. When the result of the operation becomes available, a context switch back to that thread is performed to allow the thread to continue.