Abstract:
An address check boundary (ACB) register is initialized in accordance with the total amount of control/main storage with common addressing and with the relative amounts of control and main storage for the purpose of: 1. PROVIDING THE HIGHER ORDER BITS OF CONTROL STORE ADDRESS THUS PERMITTING FEWER BITS IN THE MICROPROGRAM SUPPLIED CONTROL STORE ADDRESS WITH RESULTING REDUCTION IN THE CONTROL WORD SIZE; 2. MODIFYING THE ACB supplied higher order bits and/or the microprogram supplied address bits where required; 3. SUPPLYING THE BOUNDARY ADDRESS BETWEEN CONTROL/MAIN STORE TO INITIATE AN ERROR SIGNAL IF MAIN STORE IS ACCESSED WHEN CONTROL STORE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ACCESSED AND VICE VERSA; 4. PROVIDING DATA REGARDING THE TYPE (INTERNAL - EXTERNAL) AND AMOUNT OF MAIN STORAGE AND REGARDING THE SYSTEM TYPE - SIMPLEX (ONE PROCESSOR) OR DUPLEX (TWO PROCESSORS).
Abstract:
In a high performance microprogrammed processor, ALU results obtained during one microprogram cycle are destined to a pair of high speed local storage units during the next succeeding cycle. During each write operation, identical data is stored in corresponding register positions of each local storage unit. This permits simultaneous accessing of any two operands from the local storage units during read operations for application to ALU input registers. Means are effective early in each cycle for comparing the operand addresses with the destination address of ALU results (if any) from the next preceding cycle. If one of the operand addresses equals the destination address, only that portion (one to four bytes) of the local store operand data, which is not updated due to the results not being destined, is blocked from entry to the ALU input register; and, instead, the corresponding ALU results are gated directly to the appropriate ALU input register for processing. Later in the cycle the ALU results are also destined to the register positions of both local storage units corresponding to the destination address.
Abstract:
A microprogrammed processor has a single storage unit for both main store and control store wherein the read/write times of the storage unit are less than the time required for the microprogram controlled hardware to execute a control word. Since there is no requirement for the hardware to wait for a next succeeding access to storage as in typical known processors, but rather the storage unit now waits for the hardware, it becomes feasible and practicable to improve the performance of the processor significantly with little additional cost by providing basic machine cycle times for different control word executions which are maintained at a minimum. In the preferred embodiment, a decode circuit examines each control word after it is transferred from control store to a control register to determine the word type which is to be executed. Depending upon the word type, the decode circuitry applies control pulses to the processor clock to cause ti to produce a selected one of three available cycle lengths or a combination of two of said three available cycle lengths. In this manner, system performance is significantly improved.