Techniques for performing outer product operations

Abstract

The apparatus includes a processing circuit that performs vector operations, an instruction decoder that decodes instructions for controlling the processing circuit to perform associated vector operations, and an array storage device that includes storage elements for storing data elements, the array storage device storing at least one two-dimensional array of data elements. The instruction set includes a multiple outer product instruction that identifies a given two-dimensional array of data elements within the array storage device that forms a first source vector operand, a second source vector operand, and a destination operand. At least the first source vector operand identifies at least one vector of data elements treated as including a plurality of sub-vectors, and at least the second source vector operand identifies a plurality of vectors of data elements. In response to the multiple outer product instruction, the instruction decoder controls the processing circuit to perform an outer product operation for each sub-vector identified by the first source vector operand. Each outer product operation includes multiplying each data element of an associated group of data elements selected from the second source vector operand by each data element of an associated sub-vector identified by the first source vector operand to generate a plurality of outer product results, and updating values held in associated storage elements within a given two-dimensional array of the storage elements using each outer product result. A selection circuit controls the selection of data elements processed by each outer product operation to switch vectors of the second source vector operand when switching between different sub-vectors within a given vector of the first source vector operand.

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