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Hardware implementation of a general multi-way jump mechanism

Published: 30 November 1990 Publication History

Abstract

A VLIW architecture capable of testing multiple conditions in one cycle must support effective multiway (conditional) jumps. In this paper, a hardware-implemented, fast, and space-efficient multi-way jump mechanism is developed that speeds up the execution of multiple conditional jumps and reduces wasted storage. A cluster of multiple conditional jumps packed in an instruction can form an arbitrary rooted DAG (Directed Acyclic Graph), where each node corresponds to a condition. Our scheme provides a hardware device called an M-unit, which can combinationally produce the next target address using an encoded description of the DAG and the actual test bits. A technique to reduce the number of different configurations is introduced, along with a memory packing scheme that minimizes wasted memory.

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cover image ACM Conferences
MICRO 23: Proceedings of the 23rd annual workshop and symposium on Microprogramming and microarchitecture
November 1990
299 pages
ISBN:0897914139

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IEEE Computer Society Press

Washington, DC, United States

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Published: 30 November 1990

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