Instruction and logic to provide vector loads and stores with strides and masking functionality

A machine-readable medium to record functional descriptive material including a first executable instruction, which if executed by a machine causes the machine to:

• read values of each data field of a first plurality of data fields in a first register, wherein each of the first plurality of data fields in the first register corresponds to a multiple of a stride length from a beginning address for a corresponding data element in a memory, and wherein for each data field in the first register, a first value indicates the corresponding element has not been loaded from the memory and a second value indicates that the corresponding data element does not need to be loaded, or has already been loaded from the memory;
• and
• for each data field of the plurality of data fields in the first register having the first value, compute the corresponding multiple of said stride length according to a position of the data field in the first register to load the corresponding data element from the memory and store the corresponding data element into a second register, the second register having a second plurality of data fields, a portion of which to store the loaded data elements, and
• change the value of the corresponding data field in the first register from the first value to the second value.

A processor comprising:

• a decode stage to decode a first single-instruction-multiple-data (SIMD) instruction specifying:
• a set of load operations, a destination register, a memory address, and a stride length;
• and
• one or more execution units, responsive to the decoded first SIMD instruction, to:
• read values of each data field of a first plurality of data fields in a mask register, wherein each of the first plurality of data fields in the mask register wherein each of the first plurality of data fields in the first register corresponds to a multiple of the stride length from the memory address for a corresponding data element in a memory, and wherein for each data field in the mask register, a first value indicates the corresponding element has not been loaded from the memory and a second value indicates that the corresponding data element does not need to be loaded, or has already been loaded from the memory;
• for each data field of the plurality of data fields in the mask register having the first value, compute the corresponding multiple of said stride length according to a position of the data field in the mask register to load the corresponding data element from the memory into a corresponding data field in the destination register, and change the value of the data field in the mask register from the first value to the second value.

A processing system comprising:

• a memory;
• and
• a plurality of processors each comprising:
• a decode stage to decode a first SIMD instruction specifying:
• a set of load operations, a destination register, a mask register, a memory address, and a stride length;
• and
• one or more execution units, responsive to the decoded first SIMD instruction, to:
• read values of each data field of a first plurality of data fields in the mask register, wherein each of the first plurality of data fields in the mask register wherein each of the first plurality of data fields in the first register corresponds to a multiple of the stride length from the memory address for a corresponding data element in a memory, and wherein for each data field in the mask register, a first value indicates the corresponding element has not been loaded from the memory and a second value indicates that the corresponding data element does not need to be loaded, or has already been loaded from the memory;
• for each data field of the plurality of data fields in the mask register having the first value, compute the corresponding multiple of said stride length according to a position of the data field in the mask register to load the corresponding data element from the memory into a corresponding data field in the destination register, and change the value of the data field in the mask register from the first value to the second value.