摘要:
An integrated circuit processor core 4 is provided with an instruction pipeline 20 along which program instructions advance. When an exception condition occurs part way through execution of a particular program instruction, then a prefetch of the exception handling program instruction corresponding to that exception is initiated before the currently executing program instruction has completed. In this way the exception handling program instruction is more rapidly available to start the exception processing. The early prefetch may involve performing a lookup in a cache memory 6 and any necessay linefill upon a miss. In addition, the exception handling program instruction amy also be fed into the instruction pipeline 20 before an instruction boundary is reached.
摘要:
An integrated circuit processor core 4 is provided with an instruction pipeline 20 along which program instructions advance. When an exception condition occurs part way through execution of a particular program instruction, then a prefetch of the exception handling program instruction corresponding to that exception is initiated before the currently executing program instruction has completed. In this way the exception handling program instruction is more rapidly available to start the exception processing. The early prefetch may involve performing a lookup in a cache memory 6 and any necessary linefill upon a miss. In addition, the exception handling program instruction amy also be fed into the instruction pipeline 20 before an instruction boundary is reached.
摘要:
A single instruction multiple data processing pipeline 12 for processing floating point operands includes shared special case handling circuitry 34 for performing any operand dependent special case processing operations. The operand dependent special case processing operations result from special case conditions such as operands that are denormal, an infinity, a not-a-number and a floating point number requiring format conversion. The pipeline 12 may in some embodiments be stalled while the operands requiring special case processing are serially shifted to and from the shared special case handling circuitry 34. In other embodiments the instruction in which the special case condition for an operand arose may be recirculated through the pipeline with permutation circuitry 86, 94 being used to swap the operands between lanes in order to place the operand(s) requiring special case processing operations into the lane containing the shared special case handling circuitry 98.
摘要:
A data processor comprising: a control register operable to store a cache control value; and data accessing logic responsive to a data access instruction and to said cache control value to look for data to be accessed in a cache if said cache control value has a predetermined value and not to look for said data to be accessed in said cache if said cache control value does not have said predetermined value.
摘要:
A data processor comprising: a control register operable to store a cache control value; and data accessing logic responsive to a data access instruction and to said cache control value to look for data to be accessed in a cache if said cache control value has a predetermined value and not to look for said data to be accessed in said cache if said cache control value does not have said predetermined value.
摘要:
A direct memory access controller for controlling data transfer between a data source and a data destination comprising: a read/write port operable to receive data from said data source via a source bus and to output said received data to said data destination via a destination bus; wherein said direct memory access controller is operable in response to a predetermined number of clock pulses, to control said read/write port to output said received data said predetermined number of clock pulses after having received it. Also a direct memory access controller for controlling data transfer between a data source and a data destination comprising: a single read/write port comprising a read channel operable to receive data from said data source via a read path on a bus and a write channel operable to output said received data to said data destination via a write path on said bus, said read and write channel being operable to perform data reads and writes independently of each other.
摘要:
A processor core 4 is provided with an interrupt controller 22 which serves to set an interrupt mask bit F and a hardware control when an interrupt fiq occurs. A masking control signal NMI serves to either allow or prevent the software clearing of the interrupt mask bit F.
摘要:
A single instruction multiple data processing pipeline 12 for processing floating point operands includes shared special case handling circuitry 34 for performing any operand dependent special case processing operations. The operand dependent special case processing operations result from special case conditions such as operands that are denormal, an infinity, a not-a-number and a floating point number requiring format conversion. The pipeline 12 may in some embodiments be stalled while the operands requiring special case processing are serially shifted to and from the shared special case handling circuitry 34. In other embodiments the instruction in which the special case condition for an operand arose may be recirculated through the pipeline with permutation circuitry 86, 94 being used to swap the operands between lanes in order to place the operand(s) requiring special case processing operations into the lane containing the shared special case handling circuitry 98.
摘要:
A processor core 4 is provided with an interrupt controller 22 which serves to set an interrupt mask bit F and a hardware control when an interrupt fiq occurs. A masking control signal NMI serves to either allow or prevent the software clearing of the interrupt mask bit F.
摘要:
A cache memory includes error bits corresponding to each line of data. An error detecting circuit uses these error bits to detect if a soft error has occurred within the data of a cache line. If such an error has occurred, then the line may be refilled from the main memory or some other action taken, such as a write back or generation of a soft error abort signal.