Apparatus and methods for circular shift operations

A method for vector shifting in a neural network, comprising:

• receiving, by a controller unit, a vector shifting instruction;
• temporarily storing, by an instruction queue module of the controller unit, the vector shifting instruction and one or more previously received instructions;
• retrieving, by the instruction queue module, information corresponding to operation fields in the vector shifting instruction;
• receiving, by a computation module in response to the vector shifting instruction, a vector that includes multiple elements, wherein the multiple elements are stored in a one-dimensional data structure;
• and
• shifting, by the computation module in response to the vector shifting instruction, the elements of the vector toward one direction in accordance with the vector shifting instruction, wherein the vector shifting instruction includes a step length for shifting the elements in the vector.