Patent application number | Description | Published |
20130262793 | SPLIT-WORD MEMORY - Method, process, and apparatus to efficiently store, read, and/or process syllables of word data. A portion of a data word, which includes multiple syllables, may be read by a computer processor. The processor may read a first syllable of the data word from a first memory. The processor may read a second syllable of the data word from a second portion of memory. The second syllable may include bits which are less critical than the bits of the first syllable. The second memory may be distinct from the first memory based on one or more physical attributes. | 10-03-2013 |
20130268735 | SUPPORT FOR SPECULATIVE OWNERSHIP WITHOUT DATA - Techniques are described for providing an enhanced cache coherency protocol for a multi-core processor that includes a Speculative Request For Ownership Without Data (SRFOWD) for a portion of cache memory. With a SRFOWD, only an acknowledgement message may be provided as an answer to a requesting core. The contents of the affected cache line are not required to be a part of the answer. The enhanced cache coherency protocol may assure that a valid copy of the current cache line exists in case of misspeculation by the requesting core. Thus, an owner of the current copy of the cache line may maintain a copy of the old contents of the cache line. The old contents of the cache line may be discarded if speculation by the requesting core turns out to be correct. Otherwise, in case of misspeculation by the requesting core, the old contents of the cache line may be set back to a valid state. | 10-10-2013 |
20130326199 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR CONTROLLING A MXCSR - Disclosed is an apparatus and method generally related to controlling a multimedia extension control and status register (MXCSR). A processor core may include a floating point unit (FPU) to perform arithmetic functions; and a multimedia extension control register (MXCR) to provide control bits to the FPU. Further an optimizer may be used to select a speculative multimedia extension status register (SPEC_MXSR) from a plurality of SPEC_MXSRs to update a multimedia extension status register (MXSR) based upon an instruction. | 12-05-2013 |
20130332705 | PROFILING ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS RESULTING FROM THE EXECUTION OF SOFTWARE AT CODE REGION GRANULARITY - A combination of hardware and software collect profile data for asynchronous events, at code region granularity. An exemplary embodiment is directed to collecting metrics for prefetching events, which are asynchronous in nature. Instructions that belong to a code region are identified using one of several alternative techniques, causing a profile bit to be set for the instruction, as a marker. Each line of a data block that is prefetched is similarly marked. Events corresponding to the profile data being collected and resulting from instructions within the code region are then identified. Each time that one of the different types of events is identified, a corresponding counter is incremented. Following execution of the instructions within the code region, the profile data accumulated in the counters are collected, and the counters are reset for use with a new code region. | 12-12-2013 |
20140019721 | MANAGED INSTRUCTION CACHE PREFETCHING - Disclosed is an apparatus and method to manage instruction cache prefetching from an instruction cache. A processor may comprise: a prefetch engine; a branch prediction engine to predict the outcome of a branch; and dynamic optimizer. The dynamic optimizer may be used to control: indentifying common instruction cache misses and inserting a prefetch instruction from the prefetch engine to the instruction cache. | 01-16-2014 |
20140095849 | INSTRUCTION AND LOGIC FOR OPTIMIZATION LEVEL AWARE BRANCH PREDICTION - A computer-readable storage medium, method and system for optimization-level aware branch prediction is described. A gear level is assigned to a set of application instructions that have been optimized. The gear level is also stored in a register of a branch prediction unit of a processor. Branch prediction is then performed by the processor based upon the gear level. | 04-03-2014 |
20140156976 | METHOD, APPARATUS AND SYSTEM FOR SELECTIVE EXECUTION OF A COMMIT INSTRUCTION - Techniques and mechanisms for a processor to determine whether a commit action is to be performed. In an embodiment, a processor performs operations to determine whether a commit instruction is for contingent performance of a commit action. In another embodiment, one or more conditions of processor state are evaluated in response to determining that the commit instruction is for contingent performance of the commit action, where the evaluation is performed to determine whether the commit action indicated by the commit instruction is to be performed. | 06-05-2014 |
20140208033 | Split-Word Memory - Method, process, and apparatus to efficiently store, read, and/or process syllables of word data. A portion of a data word, which includes multiple syllables, may be read by a computer processor. The processor may read a first syllable of the data word from a first memory. The processor may read a second syllable of the data word from a second portion of memory. The second syllable may include bits which are less critical than the bits of the first syllable. The second memory may be distinct from the first memory based on one or more physical attributes. | 07-24-2014 |
20140281419 | COMBINED FLOATING POINT MULTIPLIER ADDER WITH INTERMEDIATE ROUNDING LOGIC - An error handling method includes identifying a code region eligible for cumulative multiply add (CMA) optimization and translating code region instructions into interpreter code instructions, which may include translating sequences of multiply add instructions in the code region instructions into fusion code including CMA instructions. Floating point (FP) exceptions generated by the fusion code may be monitored and at least a portion of the code region instructions may be re-translated to eliminate some or all fusion code if CMA intermediate rounding exceptions exceed a threshold. | 09-18-2014 |
20150026671 | MECHANISM FOR FACILITATING DYNAMIC AND EFFICIENT FUSION OF COMPUTING INSTRUCTIONS IN SOFTWARE PROGRAMS - A mechanism is described for facilitating dynamic and efficient fusion of computing instructions according to one embodiment. A method of embodiments, as described herein, includes monitoring a software program for a program region having fusion candidate instructions for a fusion operation at a computing system; evaluating whether the macro operation of the candidate instructions is valuable to the software program; and performing the fusion operation if it is evaluated to be valuable. | 01-22-2015 |
20150081975 | Split-Word Memory - Method, process, and apparatus to efficiently store, read, and/or process syllables of word data. A portion of a data word, which includes multiple syllables, may be read by a computer processor. The processor may read a first syllable of the data word from a first memory. The processor may read a second syllable of the data word from a second portion of memory. The second syllable may include bits which are less critical than the bits of the first syllable. The second memory may be distinct from the first memory based on one or more physical attributes. | 03-19-2015 |