188 results about "FLAGS register" patented technology

An analytical virtual machine (AVM) analyzes computer code using a software processor including a register that stores behavior flags indicative of behaviors identified by virtually executing the code within the virtual machine. The AVM includes a sequencer that stores the sequence in which behavior flags are set in the behavior flags register. The AVM analyzes machine performance by emulating execution of the code being analyzed on a fully virtual machine and records the observed behavior. When emulation and analysis are complete, the AVM returns the behavior flags register and sequencer to the real machine and terminates.

A multithreaded processor includes an interrupt controller for processing a cross-thread interrupt directed from a requesting thread to a destination thread. The interrupt controller in an illustrative embodiment receives a request for delivery of the cross-thread interrupt to the destination thread, determines whether the destination thread of the cross-thread interrupt is enabled for receipt of cross-thread interrupts, and utilizes a thread identifier to control delivery of the cross-thread interrupt to the destination thread if the destination thread is enabled for receipt of cross-thread interrupts. The requesting thread requests delivery of the cross-thread interrupt to the destination thread by setting a corresponding interrupt pending bit in a flag register of the multithreaded processor. The destination thread is enabled for receipt of cross-thread interrupts if a corresponding enable bit is set in an enable register of the multithreaded processor. The flag and enable registers may be implemented within the interrupt controller.

A dual-instruction set central processing unit (CPU) is capable of executing instructions from a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set and from a complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set. Data and address information may be to transferred from a CISC program to a RISC program running on the CPU by using shared registers. The architecturally-defined registers in the CISC instruction set are merged or folded into some of the architecturally-defined registers in the RISC architecture so that these merged registers are shared by the two instructions sets. In particular, the flags or condition code registers defined by each architecture are merged together so that CISC instructions and RISC instructions will implicitly update the same merged flags register when performing computational instructions. The RISC and CISC registers are folded together so that the CISC flags are at one end of the register while the frequently used RISC flags are at the other end, but the RISC instructions can read or write any bit in the merged register. The CISC code segment base address is stored in the RISC branch count register, while the CISC floating point instruction address is stored in the RISC branch link register. The general-purpose registers (GPR's) are also merged together, allowing a CISC program to pass data to a RISC program merely by writing one of its GPR's, switching control to the RISC program, and the RISC program reading one of its GPR's that is merged with and corresponds to the CISC GPR that was written to by the CISC program.

A microprocessor with a floating point unit configured to rapidly execute floating point compare (FCOMI) type instructions that are followed by floating point conditional move (FCMOV) type instructions is disclosed. FCOMI-type instructions, which normally store their results to integer status flag registers, are modified to store a copy of their results to a temporary register located within the floating point unit. If an FCMOV-type instruction is detected following an FCOMI-type instruction, then the FCMOV-type instruction's source for flag information is changed from the integer flag register to the temporary register. FCMOV-type instructions are thereby able to execute earlier because they need not wait for the integer flags to be read from the integer portion of the microprocessor. A computer system and method for rapidly executing FCOMI-type instructions followed by FCMOV-type instructions are also disclosed.

A semiconductor integrated circuit device includes a memory cell array having a plurality of blocks, a storage unit, a block replacement information register group, and a bad block flag register group. The storage unit includes a block replacement information registration area with which it is possible to register block replacement information, and a bad block information registration area with which it is possible to register bad block information. The block replacement information register group is set in accordance with the block replacement information read out of the storage unit during a boot sequence, and the bad block flag register group is set in accordance with both of the block replacement information and the bad block information read out of the storage unit during the boot sequence.

The load/sense control of the setting value that corresponds to the processor core for CMP, etc. processors that have multi-cores realize, for such processors with multi-core structures, the shortening of system boot time during multi-core operation, flexible debugging methods, and improvement of yield with the aid of partial core quality product chips at time of semiconductor production, by equipping a core selection flag register that maintains the status of each core, and controlling the output to the core block from the processor common block through that core selection flag register status.

A phase change memory is provided with a write data register, an output data selector, a write address register, an address comparator and a flag register. Write data is not only written into a memory cell but also retained by the write data register until the next write cycle. If a read access occurs to that address before the next write cycle, data is read out from the register without reading the data from the memory cell array. Without elongating the cycle time, it is possible not only to use long time to write data into a memory cell therein but also to make longer the interval between the time when a write operation is done and the time when the subsequent read operation is made from that memory cell. As a result, data can be written reliably.

According to the present invention, there is provided a semiconductor integrated circuit having: a BIST circuit including, a data generator which generates and outputs write data to be supplied to a memory, an address generator which generates and outputs an address signal to be supplied to the memory, a control signal generator which generates and outputs a control signal for controlling the memory, a result analyzer which receives a flag signal, analyzes a result of a BIST, and outputs a BIST result signal, a BIST controller which controls operations of the data generator, the address generator, the control signal generator, and the result analyzer, and outputs a BIST state signal indicating a state of the BIST, and a diagnostic data storage circuit including a first capture register which captures and outputs, in accordance with a first clock, a latest address signal and the BIST state signal output from the BIST controller while no flag signal is supplied, and maintains outputs when the flag signal is supplied, a storage register which receive and stores the outputs from the first capture register in accordance with a second clock lower in speed than the first clock while no shift enable signal is supplied, thereby storing the address signal and the BIST signal corresponding to the supply timing of the flag signal, and outputs the stored contents outside by shifting them when the shift enable signal is supplied, and flag suppressing means for comparing the outputs from the first capture register with the stored contents of the storage register, and outputting a flag suppression signal, after the flag signal is supplied, until the latest address signal and the BIST state signal output from the first capture register match the address signal and the BIST control signal stored in the storage register; and a memory collar including, a memory cell which performs a write operation by receiving the write data, the address signal, and the control signal, and reads out and outputs the written data, in accordance with the first clock, a second capture register which captures latest data output from the memory cell while neither the shift enable signal nor the flag signal is supplied, maintains held contents when the flag signal is supplied, and outputs held contents outside by shifting the held contents when the shift enable signal is supplied, a comparator which compares the output from the second capture register with an expected value, and outputs a comparison result signal meaning failure detection if the output and the expected value do not match, and a flag register which outputs the flag signal on the basis of the comparison result signal while no flag suppression signal is supplied, and suppresses the output of the flag signal when the flag suppression signal is supplied

An analytical virtual machine (AVM) analyzes computer code using a software processor including a register that stores behavior flags indicative of behaviors identified by virtually executing the code within the virtual machine. The AVM includes a sequencer that stores the sequence in which behavior flags are set in the behavior flags register. The AVM analyzes machine performance by emulating execution of the code being analyzed on a fully virtual machine and records the observed behavior. When emulation and analysis are complete, the AVM returns the behavior flags register and sequencer to the real machine and terminates.

The use of checking instructions to detect special and exceptional cases of a defined data format in a microprocessor is disclosed. Generally speaking, a checking instruction is included with the microcode of floating-point instructions to detect special and exceptional cases of operand values for the floating-point instructions. A checking instruction is configured to set one or more flags in a flags register if it detects a special or exceptional case for an operand value. A checking instruction may also set the result or results of a floating-point instruction to a result value if a special or exceptional case is detected. In addition, a checking instruction may be configured to set one or more bits in status register if a special or exceptional case is detected. After a checking instruction completes execution, a subsequent microcode instruction can be executed to determine if one or more flags were set by the checking instruction. If one or more flags have been set by the checking instruction, the subsequent microcode instruction can branch to a non-sequential microcode instruction to handle the special or exceptional case detected by the checking instruction.

The invention discloses a parallel digital signal processor comprising a program storage, an address-acquiring buffer unit, a decoding unit, an execution core, an address generating unit, a control/flag register access unit and a data bus, wherein the address-acquiring buffer unit is used for providing an address for the program storage, caching instructions from the program storage, splicing the instructions into parallel execution lines and then transmitting to the decoding unit; the decoding unit is used for decoding each instruction in the parallel execution line; the execution core is used for receiving a first control signal set and a second control signal set which are generated by the decoding unit, and carrying out instruction execution processing according to the states of the control signal sets; the address generating unit is used for receiving a third control signal set generated by the decoding unit and carrying out storage access processing according to the state of the control signal set; the control/flag register access unit is used for receiving a first control signal set generated by the decoding unit and carrying out control/flag register access instruction processing according to the state of the control signal set; and the data bus is used for a data storage from the read and write request of the execution core and connecting the data storage and the execution core.

A system for conditionally executing an instruction depending on a previously existing condition. The system disclosed is configured to handle conditional execution instructions typically specifying at least one target instruction, a processor register, and a condition within the register. The system saves a result of each of the target instructions dependent upon the existence of the condition in the specified register during execution of the conditional execution instruction. When the conditional execution instruction specifies a first flag register, the system copies the flag bits in the first flag register to a corresponding second flag register, and saves a result of each of the target instructions dependent upon the specified condition in the first flag register during execution of the conditional execution instruction. A subsequent conditional execution instruction may then specify a condition in the second flag register in order to conditionally execute target instructions based on a previously existing condition.

The invention provides a method for renaming a status register in a superscalar processor with a pipeline structure, wherein the status register is a register composed of a plurality of flag bits selected from all flag bits of a flag register. The method comprises determining whether a microcode will read the status register when the microcode coded by a command reaches a register renaming module of the processor; if determining that the microcode will read the status register, allocating a nearest mapping physical register for the status register; otherwise, not allocating the physical register for the status register; determining whether the microcode will be written to the status register; if determining that the microcode will be written into the status register, allocating a new physical register with empty status to the status register; and otherwise, not allocating the physical register for the status register.

A merge sorting apparatus includes a comparison tournament circuit including comparison nodes, and a comparison control circuit for supplying to the corresponding comparison nodes validity flag information concerning the input data to each of the comparison nodes determined based on comparison results from the comparison nodes. The comparison control circuit includes comparison result registers for retaining the comparison results, validity flag registers for retaining the validity flag information, and merge member registers for retaining information as to whether the input data to each of the input registers corresponding to respective pathways should be the object of comparison in the following data comparison processing. With this arrangement, contending readouts of record arrays from a memory can be reduced and the necessity to initialize each register is eliminated, thereby speeding merge sorting.

According to the present invention, a compiler generates, as debugging information on variables appearing in a source program and the allocation of hardware resources, location information made up of elements showing, for each entry of a variable, an address range within which the variable is valid, a condition flag which is made true within the address range when the variable is valid, and a resource allocated to the variable. A debugging device analyzes the debugging information and stores it. When examining the value of a variable, an entry for the valid variable is determined from the address currently being executed and the value held in the condition flag register, and the resource allocated to that variable is obtained. In this way, the contents of the variable can be referenced correctly.

Instructions and logic provide vector load-op and/or store-op with stride functionality. Some embodiments, responsive to an instruction specifying: a set of loads, a second operation, destination register, operand register, memory address, and stride length; execution units read values in a mask register, wherein fields in the mask register correspond to stride-length multiples from the memory address to data elements in memory. A first mask value indicates the element has not been loaded from memory and a second value indicates that the element does not need to be, or has already been loaded. For each having the first value, the data element is loaded from memory into the corresponding destination register location, and the corresponding value in the mask register is changed to the second value. Then the second operation is performed using corresponding data in the destination and operand registers to generate results. The instruction may be restarted after faults.

A CPU life-extension apparatus and method makes a processor appear to be an upgraded CPU to substantially all software applications accessed thereby, thereby reducing the need and expense of upgrading a selected processor. A CPU life-extension module translates new instructions, intended for a CPU upgrade, into instructions recognized by the processor. In addition, the CPU life-extension module is programmed to monitor reads from and writes to a processor's flags register to modify the flags to emulate those of an upgraded CPU. The CPU life-extension module is configured to respond to interrupts generated by the processor in order to perform its various tasks.

An HLR register for maintaining data relating to mobile users of a network for use by the network, the register being arranged to be coupled to a mate register at a remote location for back up of the data, the register being divided into segments and arranged to carry out a partial handover to the mate register by handing over maintenance of data of one or some of the segments to the mate register temporarily. By allowing a partial handover rather than requiring a complete handover, the handover can be simpler and quicker. This can reduce the risk of loss of data or reduce an amount of down time and consequential losses of revenue. This is particularly important for larger registers. The handover can be triggered by a fault in the segment or for the purpose of planned maintenance for example. It can be triggered manually or automatically.