公开(公告)号：US5008812A

公开(公告)日：1991-04-16

申请号：US170399

申请日：1988-03-18

申请人： Dileep P. Bhandarkar ,  Dave Cutler ,  Wayne Cardoza ,  Rich Witek ,  Dave Orbits

发明人： Dileep P. Bhandarkar ,  Dave Cutler ,  Wayne Cardoza ,  Rich Witek ,  Dave Orbits

IPC分类号： G06F9/46 ,  G06F9/48 ,  G06F17/16

CPC分类号： G06F9/462

摘要： The invention relates to a method and apparatus to minimize the time a data processing system spends on saving and restoring vector processor state data during a context switch. A context switch occurs when execution of an old process is suspended and execution of a current process is begun. The vector state data associated with the old process remains in the vector processor until the current process attempts to execute a vector instruction. When this occurs, the vector state data associated with the old process is saved and vector state data associated with the current process is restored, if the old process is not the same as the current process. If the old process is the same as the current process, there is no need to save and restore any vector state data.