Dual-instruction-set CPU having shared register for storing data

Details Dual-instruction-set CPU having shared register for storing data Dual-instruction-set CPU having shared register for storing data

1995-10-24

1998-09-08

An, Meng-Ai T.

395570, 39580041, 39580042, 395566, 395385, G06F 930

Patent

active

058059180

ABSTRACT:
A dual-instruction set central processing unit (CPU) is capable of executing instructions from a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set and from a complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set. Data and address information may be transferred from a CISC program to a RISC program running on the CPU by using shared registers. The architecturally-defined registers in the CISC instruction set are merged or folded into some of the architecturally-defined registers in the RISC architecture so that these merged registers are shared by the two instructions sets. In particular, the flags or condition code registers defined by each architecture are merged together so that CISC instructions and RISC instructions will implicitly update the same merged flags register when performing computational instructions. The RISC and CISC registers are folded together so that the CISC flags are at one end of the register while the frequently used RISC flags are at the other end, but the RISC instructions can read or write any bit in the merged register. The CISC code segment base address is stored in the RISC branch count register, while the CISC floating point instruction address is stored in the RISC branch link register. The general-purpose registers (GPR's) are also merged together, allowing a CISC program to pass data to a RISC program merely by writing one of its GPR's, switching control to the RISC program, and the RISC program reading one of its GPR's that is merged with and corresponds to the CISC GPR that was written to by the CISC program.

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