Selecting multiple threads for substantially concurrent processing
AssigneeVIA Technologies, Inc.
InventorsYang (Jeff) Jiao, Yiping Chen, Wen-Chung Chen
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The present disclosure provides for processing units, which are capable of concurrently executing instructions, and a source arbitrator. The source arbitrator determines whether instructions for the processing units are read from different sources. If the source arbitrator determines that each processing unit reads its respective instruction from a different source, then the instructions from the various sources are provided to their corresponding processing units for substantially concurrent processing.
Claims23
An instruction processing method, comprising the steps of:
- (A) identifying a source operand associated with a first thread;
- (B) identifying a source operand associated with a second thread;
- (C) identifying a destination operand associated with the first thread;
- (D) identifying a destination operand associated with the second thread;
- (E) determining whether the source operand associated with the second thread has a conflict with the source operand of the first thread;
- (F) determining whether the destination operand associated with the second thread has a conflict with the destination operand of the first thread;
- (G) in response to determining that no conflict exists between the source and destination operands of the first and second threads, substantially concurrently:
- (G1) directing the first thread to a first processing unit;
- and
- (G2) directing the second thread to a second processing unit.
A multi-issue processor, comprising:
- a source arbitrator configured to determine whether a first source is different from a second source;
- a first processing unit configured to read from the first source and write to a first destination to process a first thread;
- and
- a second processing unit configured to read from the second source and write to a second destination to process a second thread, the second source being read in response to the source arbitrator determining that the second source is different from the first source.
A method comprising the steps of:
- determining whether a source associated with a first thread is different from a source associated with a second thread;
- and
- substantially concurrently:
- reading an instruction associated with the first thread;
- and
- reading an instruction associated with the second thread in response to determining that the source associated with the first thread is different from the source associated with the second thread.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.