Patent application number | Description | Published |
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 |
20120221871 | METHOD, APPARATUS, AND SYSTEM FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND ENERGY CONSERVATION INCLUDING DETECTING AND CONTROLLING CURRENT RAMPS IN PROCESSING CIRCUIT - Some implementations provide techniques and arrangements for adjusting a rate at which operations are performed by a processor based on a comparison of a first indication of power consumed by the processor as a result of performing a first set of operations and a second indication of power consumed by the processor as a result of performing a second set of operations. The rate at which operations are performed by the processor may be adjusted when the comparison indicates that a difference between the first indication of power consumed by the processor and the second indication of power consumed by the processor is greater than a threshold value. | 08-30-2012 |
20120311307 | Method And Apparatus For Obtaining A Call Stack To An Event Of Interest And Analyzing The Same - In one embodiment, a processor includes a performance monitor including a last branch record (LBR) stack to store a call stack to an event of interest, where the call stack is collected responsive to a trigger for the event. The processor further includes logic to control the LBR stack to operate in a call stack mode such that an entry to a call instruction for a leaf function is cleared on return from the leaf function. Other embodiments are described and claimed. | 12-06-2012 |
20130205119 | INSTRUCTION AND LOGIC TO TEST TRANSACTIONAL EXECUTION STATUS - Novel instructions, logic, methods and apparatus are disclosed to test transactional execution status. Embodiments include decoding a first instruction to start a transactional region. Responsive to the first instruction, a checkpoint for a set of architecture state registers is generated and memory accesses from a processing element in the transactional region associated with the first instruction are tracked. A second instruction to detect transactional execution of the transactional region is then decoded. An operation is executed, responsive to decoding the second instruction, to determine if an execution context of the second instruction is within the transactional region. Then responsive to the second instruction, a first flag is updated. In some embodiments, a register may optionally be updated and/or a second flag may optionally be updated responsive to the second instruction. | 08-08-2013 |
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 |
20130262837 | PROGRAMMABLE COUNTERS FOR COUNTING FLOATING-POINT OPERATIONS IN SMD PROCESSORS - A processor includes an execution unit to execute instructions, where each operand of each executed instruction has one or more elements of an element size and at least one operand of the instruction corresponds to a register of a register size. The processor further includes a counter configured to count a number of instructions that have been executed by the execution unit associated with a particular combination of register size and element size. | 10-03-2013 |
20130311758 | HARDWARE PROFILING MECHANISM TO ENABLE PAGE LEVEL AUTOMATIC BINARY TRANSLATION - A hardware profiling mechanism implemented by performance monitoring hardware enables page level automatic binary translation. The hardware during runtime identifies a code page in memory containing potentially optimizable instructions. The hardware requests allocation of a new page in memory associated with the code page, where the new page contains a collection of counters and each of the counters corresponds to one of the instructions in the code page. When the hardware detects a branch instruction having a branch target within the code page, it increments one of the counters that has the same position in the new page as the branch target in the code page. The execution of the code page is repeated and the counters are incremented when branch targets fall within the code page. The hardware then provides the counter values in the new page to a binary translator for binary translation. | 11-21-2013 |
20140013086 | ADDITION INSTRUCTIONS WITH INDEPENDENT CARRY CHAINS - A number of addition instructions are provided that have no data dependency between each other. A first addition instruction stores its carry output in a first flag of a flags register without modifying a second flag in the flags register. A second addition instruction stores its carry output in the second flag of the flags register without modifying the first flag in the flags register. | 01-09-2014 |
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 |
20140095814 | Memory Renaming Mechanism in Microarchitecture - A processor includes a processing unit including a storage module having stored thereon a table for tracking physical registers in which each store operation stores source data and a memory renaming module for register renaming load operations based on the table. | 04-03-2014 |
20140095838 | Physical Reference List for Tracking Physical Register Sharing - A processor includes a processing unit including a storage module having stored thereon a physical reference list for storing identifications of physical registers that have been referenced by multiple logical registers, and a reclamation module for reclaiming physical registers to a free list based on a count of each of the physical registers on the physical reference list. | 04-03-2014 |
20140156977 | ENABLING AND DISABLING A SECOND JUMP EXECUTION UNIT FOR BRANCH MISPREDICTION - Techniques are described for enabling and/or disabling a secondary jump execution unit (JEU) in a micro-processor. The secondary JEU is incorporated in the micro-processor to operate concurrently with a primary JEU, and to enable the handling of simultaneous branch mispredicts on multiple branches. Activation and deactivation of the secondary JEU may be controlled by a pressure counter or a confidence counter. A pressure counter mechanism increments a count for each branch operation executed within the processor and decrements the count by a decay value during each cycle. A confidence counter mechanism increments a count for each correctly predicted branch, and decrements the count for each mispredict. Each counter signals an activation component, such as a port binding hardware component, to begin binding micro-operations to the secondary JEU when the counter exceeds an activation threshold. The counter mechanism may be thread-agnostic or thread-specific. | 06-05-2014 |
20140181476 | Scheduler Implementing Dependency Matrix Having Restricted Entries - A scheduler implementing a dependency matrix having restricted entries is disclosed. A processing device of the disclosure includes a decode unit to decode an instruction and a scheduler communicably coupled to the decode unit. In one embodiment, the scheduler is configured to receive the decoded instruction, determine that the decoded instruction qualifies for allocation as a restricted reservation station (RS) entry type in a dependency matrix maintained by the scheduler, identify RS entries in the dependency matrix that are free for allocation, allocate one of the identified free RS entries with information of the decoded instruction in the dependency matrix, and update a row of the dependency matrix corresponding to the claimed RS entry with source dependency information of the decoded instruction. | 06-26-2014 |
20140189306 | ENHANCED LOOP STREAMING DETECTOR TO DRIVE LOGIC OPTIMIZATION - An enhanced loop streaming detection mechanism is provided in a processor to reduce power consumption. The processor includes a decoder to decode instructions in a loop into micro-operations, and a loop streaming detector to detect the presence of the loop in the micro-operations. The processor also includes a loop characteristic tracker unit to identify hardware components downstream from the decoder that are not to be used by the micro-operations in the loop, and to disable the identified hardware components. The processor also includes execution circuitry to execute the micro-operations in the loop with the identified hardware components disabled. | 07-03-2014 |
20140195790 | PROCESSOR WITH SECOND JUMP EXECUTION UNIT FOR BRANCH MISPREDICTION - A secondary jump execution unit (JEU) is incorporated in a micro-processor to operate concurrently with a primary JEU, enabling the execution of simultaneous branch operations with possible detection of multiple branch mispredicts. When branch operations are executed on both JEUs in a same instruction cycle, mispredict processing for the secondary JEU is skidded into the primary JEU's dispatch pipeline such that the branch processing for the secondary JEU occurs after processing of the branch for the primary JEU and while the primary JEU is not processing a branch. Moreover, in cases when a nuke command is also received from a reorder buffer of the processor, the branch processing for the secondary JEU is further delayed to accommodate processing of the nuke on the primary JEU. Further embodiments support the promotion of the secondary JEU to have access to the mispredict mechanisms of the primary JEU in certain circumstances. | 07-10-2014 |
20140201505 | PREDICTION-BASED THREAD SELECTION IN A MULTITHREADING PROCESSOR - A processor includes one or more execution units to execute instructions of a plurality of threads and thread control logic coupled to the execution units to predict whether a first of the plurality of threads is ready for selection in a current cycle based on readiness of instructions of the first thread in one or more previous cycles, to predict whether a second of the plurality of threads is ready for selection in the current cycle based on readiness of instructions of the second thread in the one or more previous cycles, and to select one of the first and second threads in the current cycle based on the predictions. | 07-17-2014 |
20140310504 | Systems and Methods for Flag Tracking in Move Elimination Operations - Systems and methods for flag tracking in data manipulation operations involving move elimination. An example processing system comprises a first data structure including a plurality of physical register values; a second data structure including a plurality of pointers referencing elements of the first data structure; a third data structure including a plurality of move elimination sets, each move elimination set comprising two or more bits representing two or more logical data registers, the third data structure further comprising at least one bit associated with each move elimination set, the at least one bit representing one or more logical flag registers; a fourth data structure including an identifier of a data register sharing an element of the first data structure with a flag register; and a move elimination logic configured to perform a move elimination operation. | 10-16-2014 |
20140337604 | MINIMIZING BANDWIDTH TO TRACK RETURN TARGETS BY AN INSTRUCTION TRACING SYSTEM - A processing device implementing minimizing bandwidth to track return targets by an instruction tracing system is disclosed. A processing device of the disclosure an instruction fetch unit comprising a return stack buffer (RSB) to predict a target address of a return (RET) instruction corresponding to a call (CALL) instruction. The processing device further includes a retirement unit comprising an instruction tracing module to initiate instruction tracing for instructions executed by the processing device, determine whether the target address of the RET instruction was mispredicted, determine a value of call depth counter (CDC) maintained by the instruction tracing module, and when the target address of the RET instruction was not mispredicted and when the value of the CDC is greater than zero, generate an indication that the RET instruction branches to a next linear instruction after the corresponding CALL instruction. | 11-13-2014 |
20140344552 | PROVIDING STATUS OF A PROCESSING DEVICE WITH PERIODIC SYNCHRONIZATION POINT IN INSTRUCTION TRACING SYSTEM - In accordance with embodiments disclosed herein, there is provided systems and methods for providing status of a processing device with a periodic synchronization point in an instruction tracing system. For example, the method may include generating a boundary packet based on a unique byte pattern in a packet log. The boundary packet provides a starting point for packet decode. The method may also include generating a plurality of state packets based on status information of the processor. The plurality of state packets follows the boundary packet when outputted into the packet log. | 11-20-2014 |
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 |