Speculative non-faulting loads and gathers

A method, comprising:

• decoding an instruction to read a plurality of data elements from memory, the instruction having a first operand specifying a storage location, a second operand specifying a bitmask having one or more bits, each bit corresponding to one of the data elements, and a third operand specifying a memory address storing a plurality of data elements;
• and
• reading, in response to the instruction, one or more data elements speculatively, based on the bitmask specified by the second operand, from a memory location based on the memory address indicated by the third operand;
• and
• storing the one or more data elements in the storage location indicated by the first operand.

A system comprising:

• an interconnect;
• a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) coupled to the interconnect;
• and
• a processor coupled the interconnect, including
• an instruction decoder to decode an instruction to read a plurality of data elements from memory, the instruction having a first operand specifying a storage location, a second operand specifying a bitmask having one or more bits, each bit corresponding to one of the data elements, and a third operand specifying a memory address storing a plurality of data elements;
• and
• an execution unit coupled to the instruction decoder, in response to the instruction, to read one or more data elements speculatively, based on the bitmask specified by the second operand, from a memory location based on the memory address indicated by the third operand, and to store the one or more data elements in the storage location indicated by the first operand.