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. 10, 2013
Filed:
Oct. 01, 2009
John L. Duncan, Austin, TX (US);
Thomas C. Mcdonald, Austin, TX (US);
John L. Duncan, Austin, TX (US);
Thomas C. McDonald, Austin, TX (US);
VIA Technologies, Inc., New Taipei, TW;
Abstract
An apparatus efficiently determines the length of an instruction within a stream of instruction bytes processed by a microprocessor having a variable instruction length instruction set architecture. The apparatus includes combinatorial logic associated with each instruction byte of the stream, each configured to receive the associated instruction byte and the next instruction byte of the stream and to generate in response thereto a first length, a second length, and a select control. A multiplexor associated with each of the combinatorial logic selects and outputs one of the following inputs based on the select control received from the combinatorial logic: a zero input and the second length received from the combinatorial logic associated with each of the next three instruction bytes of the stream. An adder associated with each of the combinatorial logic and multiplexor adds the first length and the output of the multiplexor to generate the length of the instruction.