Patent application number | Description | Published |
20080215861 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR EFFICIENT RESOURCE UTILIZATION FOR PRESCIENT INSTRUCTION PREFETCH - Embodiments of an apparatus, system and method enhance the efficiency of processor resource utilization during instruction prefetching via one or more speculative threads. Renamer logic and a map table are utilized to perform filtering of instructions in a speculative thread instruction stream. The map table includes a yes-a-thing bit to indicate whether the associated physical register's content reflects the value that would be computed by the main thread. A thread progress beacon table is utilized to track relative progress of a main thread and a speculative helper thread. Based upon information in the thread progress beacon table, the main thread may effect termination of a helper thread that is not likely to provide a performance benefit for the main thread. | 09-04-2008 |
20090089562 | Methods and apparatuses for reducing power consumption of processor switch operations - Methods and apparatuses for reducing power consumption of processor switch operations are disclosed. One or more embodiments may comprise specifying a subset of registers or state storage elements to be involved in a register or state storage operation, performing the register or state storage operation, and performing a switch operation. The embodiments may minimize the number of registers or state storage elements involved with the standby operation by specifying only the subset of registers or state storage elements, which may involve considerably fewer than the total number of registers or state storage or elements of the processor. The switch operation may be switch from one mode to another, such as a transition to or from a sleep mode, a context switch, or the execution of various types of instructions. | 04-02-2009 |
20090172438 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR COST AND POWER EFFICIENT, SCALABLE OPERATING SYSTEM INDEPENDENT SERVICES - A low cost, low power consumption scalable architecture is provided to allow a computer system to be managed remotely during all system power states. In a lowest power state, power is only applied to minimum logic necessary to examine a network packet. Power is applied for a short period of time to an execution subsystem and one of a plurality of cores selected to handle processing of received service requests. After processing the received service requests, the computer system returns to the lowest power state. | 07-02-2009 |
20090187712 | Operation Frame Filtering, Building, And Execution - The present subject matter relates to operation frame filtering, building, and execution. Some embodiments include identifying a frame signature, counting a number of execution occurrences of the frame signature, and building a frame of operations to execute instead of operations identified by the frame signature. | 07-23-2009 |
20100332811 | SPECULATIVE MULTI-THREADING FOR INSTRUCTION PREFETCH AND/OR TRACE PRE-BUILD - The latencies associated with retrieving instruction information for a main thread are decreased through the use of a simultaneous helper thread. The helper thread is a speculative prefetch thread to perform instruction prefetch and/or trace pre-build for the main thread. | 12-30-2010 |
20110035555 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR AFFINITY-GUIDED SPECULATIVE HELPER THREADS IN CHIP MULTIPROCESSORS - Apparatus, system and methods are provided for performing speculative data prefetching in a chip multiprocessor (CMP). Data is prefetched by a helper thread that runs on one core of the CMP while a main program runs concurrently on another core of the CMP. Data prefetched by the helper thread is provided to the helper core. For one embodiment, the data prefetched by the helper thread is pushed to the main core. It may or may not be provided to the helper core as well. A push of prefetched data to the main core may occur during a broadcast of the data to all cores of an affinity group. For at least one other embodiment, the data prefetched by a helper thread is provided, upon request from the main core, to the main core from the helper core's local cache. | 02-10-2011 |
20110087867 | PRIMITIVES TO ENHANCE THREAD-LEVEL SPECULATION - A processor may include an address monitor table and an atomic update table to support speculative threading. The processor may also include one or more registers to maintain state associated with execution of speculative threads. The processor may support one or more of the following primitives: an instruction to write to a register of the state, an instruction to trigger the committing of buffered memory updates, an instruction to read the a status register of the state, and/or an instruction to clear one of the state bits associated with trap/exception/interrupt handling. Other embodiments are also described and claimed. | 04-14-2011 |
20110154079 | Instruction For Enabling A Procesor Wait State - In one embodiment, the present invention includes a processor having a core with decode logic to decode an instruction prescribing an identification of a location to be monitored and a timer value, and a timer coupled to the decode logic to perform a count with respect to the timer value. The processor may further include a power management unit coupled to the core to determine a type of a low power state based at least in part on the timer value and cause the processor to enter the low power state responsive to the determination. Other embodiments are described and claimed. | 06-23-2011 |
20110264866 | TECHNIQUE FOR USING MEMORY ATTRIBUTES - A technique for using memory attributes to relay information to a program or other agent. More particularly, embodiments of the invention relate to using memory attribute bits to check various memory properties in an efficient manner. | 10-27-2011 |
20110296096 | Method And Apparatus For Virtualized Microcode Sequencing - In one embodiment, the present invention includes a processor having multiple cores and an uncore. The uncore may include a microcode read only memory to store microcode to be executed in the cores (that themselves do not include such memory). The cores can include a microcode sequencer to sequence a plurality of micro-instructions (uops) of microcode that corresponds to a macro-instruction to be executed in an execution unit of the corresponding core. Other embodiments are described and claimed. | 12-01-2011 |
20120084536 | PRIMITIVES TO ENHANCE THREAD-LEVEL SPECULATION - A processor may include an address monitor table and an atomic update table to support speculative threading. The processor may also include one or more registers to maintain state associated with execution of speculative threads. The processor may support one or more of the following primitives: an instruction to write to a register of the state, an instruction to trigger the committing of buffered memory updates, an instruction to read the a status register of the state, and/or an instruction to clear one of the state bits associated with trap/exception/interrupt handling. Other embodiments are also described and claimed. | 04-05-2012 |
20120272046 | Vector Completion Mask Handling - Techniques for vector completion mask (VCM) handling are provided. A data structure includes a mask field for each operand of a particular operation. A processor attempts to execute the operation with multiple operands, which are identified in the data structure by the mask fields. If operands are successfully retrieved for execution with the operation, then the corresponding mask field within the data structure is cleared. The processor can reset if any field remains set within the data structure and can re-process the operation with operands that were not previously handled with the operation. | 10-25-2012 |
20130054940 | MECHANISM FOR INSTRUCTION SET BASED THREAD EXECUTION ON A PLURALITY OF INSTRUCTION SEQUENCERS - In an embodiment, a method is provided. The method includes managing user-level threads on a first instruction sequencer in response to executing user-level instructions on a second instruction sequencer that is under control of an application level program. A first user-level thread is run on the second instruction sequencer and contains one or more user level instructions. A first user level instruction has at least 1) a field that makes reference to one or more instruction sequencers or 2) implicitly references with a pointer to code that specifically addresses one or more instruction sequencers when the code is executed. | 02-28-2013 |
20130073835 | PRIMITIVES TO ENHANCE THREAD-LEVEL SPECULATION - A processor may include an address monitor table and an atomic update table to support speculative threading. The processor may also include one or more registers to maintain state associated with execution of speculative threads. The processor may support one or more of the following primitives: an instruction to write to a register of the state, an instruction to trigger the committing of buffered memory updates, an instruction to read the a status register of the state, and/or an instruction to clear one of the state bits associated with trap/exception/interrupt handling. Other embodiments are also described and claimed. | 03-21-2013 |
20130205122 | INSTRUCTION SET ARCHITECTURE-BASED INTER-SEQUENCER COMMUNICATIONS WITH A HETEROGENEOUS RESOURCE - In one embodiment, the present invention includes a method for directly communicating between an accelerator and an instruction sequencer coupled thereto, where the accelerator is a heterogeneous resource with respect to the instruction sequencer. An interface may be used to provide the communication between these resources. Via such a communication mechanism a user-level application may directly communicate with the accelerator without operating system support. Further, the instruction sequencer and the accelerator may perform operations in parallel. Other embodiments are described and claimed. | 08-08-2013 |
20130219096 | PROGRAMMABLE EVENT DRIVEN YIELD MECHANISM WHICH MAY ACTIVATE OTHER THREADS - Method, apparatus, and program means for a programmable event driven yield mechanism that may activate other threads. In one embodiment, an apparatus includes execution resources to execute a plurality of instructions and a monitor to detect a condition indicating a low level of progress. The monitor can disrupt processing of a program by transferring to a handler in response to detecting the condition indicating a low level of progress. In another embodiment, thread switch logic may be coupled to a plurality of event monitors which monitor events within the multithreading execution logic. The thread switch logic switches threads based at least partially on a programmable condition of one or more of the performance monitors. | 08-22-2013 |
20130219399 | MECHANISM FOR INSTRUCTION SET BASED THREAD EXECUTION OF A PLURALITY OF INSTRUCTION SEQUENCERS - In an embodiment, a method is provided. The method includes managing user-level threads on a first instruction sequencer in response to executing user-level instructions on a second instruction sequencer that is under control of an application level program. A first user-level thread is run on the second instruction sequencer and contains one or more user level instructions. A first user level instruction has at least 1) a field that makes reference to one or more instruction sequencers or 2) implicitly references with a pointer to code that specifically addresses one or more instruction sequencers when the code is executed. | 08-22-2013 |
20130232499 | COMPARE AND EXCHANGE OPERATION USING SLEEP-WAKEUP MECHANISM - A method, apparatus, and system are provided for performing compare and exchange operations using a sleep-wakeup mechanism. According to one embodiment, an instruction at a processor is executed to help acquire a lock on behalf of the processor. If the lock is unavailable to be acquired by the processor, the instruction is put to sleep until an event has occurred. | 09-05-2013 |
20130246824 | Instruction For Enabling A Processor Wait State - In one embodiment, the present invention includes a processor having a core with decode logic to decode an instruction prescribing an identification of a location to be monitored and a timer value, and a timer coupled to the decode logic to perform a count with respect to the timer value. The processor may further include a power management unit coupled to the core to determine a type of a low power state based at least in part on the timer value and cause the processor to enter the low power state responsive to the determination. Other embodiments are described and claimed. | 09-19-2013 |
20140025901 | TECHNIQUE FOR USING MEMORY ATTRIBUTES - A technique for using memory attributes to relay information to a program or other agent. More particularly, embodiments of the invention relate to using memory attribute bits to check various memory properties in an efficient manner. | 01-23-2014 |
20140052963 | TECHNIQUE TO PERFORM THREE-SOURCE OPERATIONS - A technique to perform three-source instructions. At least one embodiment of the invention relates to converting a three-source instruction into at least two instructions identifying no more than two source values. | 02-20-2014 |
20140258757 | Methods And Apparatuses For Reducing Power Consumption Of Processor Switch Operations - Methods and apparatuses for reducing power consumption of processor switch operations are disclosed. One or more embodiments may comprise specifying a subset of registers or state storage elements to be involved in a register or state storage operation, performing the register or state storage operation, and performing a switch operation. The embodiments may minimize the number of registers or state storage elements involved with the standby operation by specifying only the subset of registers or state storage elements, which may involve considerably fewer than the total number of registers or state storage or elements of the processor. The switch operation may be switch from one mode to another, such as a transition to or from a sleep mode, a context switch, or the execution of various types of instructions. | 09-11-2014 |
20150032998 | METHOD, APPARATUS, AND SYSTEM FOR TRANSACTIONAL SPECULATION CONTROL INSTRUCTIONS - An apparatus and method is described herein for providing speculation control instructions. An xAcquire and xRelease instruction are provided to define a critical section. In one embodiment, the xAcquire instruction includes a lock instruction with an elision prefix and the xRelease instruction includes a lock release instruction with an elision prefix. As a result, a processor is able to elide locks and transactionally execute a critical section defined in software by xAcquire and xRelease. But by adding only prefix hints, legacy processor are able to execute the same code by just ignoring the hints and executing the critical section traditionally with locks to guarantee mutual exclusion. Moreover, xBegin and xEnd are similarly provided for in an Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) to define a transactional code region. In addition, other control speculation instructions, such as xAbort to enable explicit abort of a critical or transactional code section and xTest to test a state of speculative execution is also provided in the ISA. | 01-29-2015 |
20150070368 | Instruction Set Architecture-Based Inter-Sequencer Communications With A Heterogeneous Resource - In one embodiment, the present invention includes a method for directly communicating between an accelerator and an instruction sequencer coupled thereto, where the accelerator is a heterogeneous resource with respect to the instruction sequencer. An interface may be used to provide the communication between these resources. Via such a communication mechanism a user-level application may directly communicate with the accelerator without operating system support. Further, the instruction sequencer and the accelerator may perform operations in parallel. Other embodiments are described and claimed. | 03-12-2015 |