Hardware loops

Details Hardware loops Hardware loops

2000-11-02

2004-07-20

Coleman, Eric (Department: 2183)

Electrical computers and digital processing systems: processing

Processing control

Branching

Reexamination Certificate

active

06766444

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND
This invention relates to hardware loops implemented in a programmable processor.
In designing a programmable processor, such as a digital signal processing (DSP) system, two competing design goals are processing speed and power consumption. Conventional processors include a variety of hardware designed to increase the speed at which software instructions are executed. The additional hardware, however, typically increases the power consumption of the processor.
One technique for increasing the speed of a programmable processor is a “Hardware loop,” which may be dedicated hardware designed to expedite the execution of software instructions within a loop construct. Hardware loops may reduce the number of clock cycles used to execute a software loop by caching the instructions in local registers, thereby reducing the need to fetch the same instruction from a memory device or instruction cache a plurality of times.
Hardware loops introduce several challenges. These challenges include avoiding penalties such as setup penalties or branch penalties. Setup penalties are the loss of performance (usually an increase in processing time) associated with setting up a hardware loop. Similarly, branch penalties are the loss of performance (again, usually an increase in processing time) associated with a branch.


REFERENCES:
patent: 5303355 (1994-04-01), Gergen et al.
patent: 5696959 (1997-12-01), Guttag et al.
patent: 5710913 (1998-01-01), Gupta et al.
patent: 5724565 (1998-03-01), Dubey et al.
patent: 5734880 (1998-03-01), Guttag et al.
patent: 6571385 (2003-05-01), Muthukumar et al.
patent: 6598155 (2003-07-01), Ganapathy et al.
patent: 0 605 872 (1994-07-01), None
patent: 0 747 809 (1995-06-01), None

Affiliated with

Also associated with

Rating

Hardware loops does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.

If you have personal experience with Hardware loops, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Hardware loops will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-3253665