Invention Grant
- Patent Title: Microprocessor with private microcode RAM
- Patent Title (中): 具有专用微码RAM的微处理器
-
Application No.: US12034503Application Date: 2008-02-20
-
Publication No.: US07827390B2Publication Date: 2010-11-02
- Inventor: G. Glenn Henry , Colin Eddy , Rodney E. Hooker , Terry Parks
- Applicant: G. Glenn Henry , Colin Eddy , Rodney E. Hooker , Terry Parks
- Applicant Address: TW Taipei
- Assignee: VIA Technologies, Inc.
- Current Assignee: VIA Technologies, Inc.
- Current Assignee Address: TW Taipei
- Agent E. Alan Davis; James W. Huffman
- Main IPC: G06F9/312
- IPC: G06F9/312

Abstract:
A microprocessor includes a private RAM (PRAM), for use by microcode, which is non-user-accessible and within its own distinct address space from the system memory address space. The PRAM is denser and slower than user-accessible registers of the microprocessor macroarchitecture, thereby enabling it to provide significantly more storage for microcode. The microinstruction set includes a microinstruction for loading data from the PRAM into the user-accessible registers, and a microinstruction for storing data from user-accessible registers to the PRAM. The microcode may also use the two microinstructions to load/store between the PRAM and non-user-accessible registers of the microarchitecture. Examples of PRAM uses include: computational temporary storage area; storage of x86 VMX VMCS in response to VMREAD and VMWRITE macroinstructions; instantiation of non-user-accessible storage, such as the x86 SMBASE register; and instantiation of x86 MSRs that tolerate the additional access latency of the PRAM, such as the IA32_SYSENTER_CS MSR.
Public/Granted literature
- US20080256336A1 MICROPROCESSOR WITH PRIVATE MICROCODE RAM Public/Granted day:2008-10-16
Information query