Method and apparatus for the transparent emulation of an existin

Details Method and apparatus for the transparent emulation of an existin Method and apparatus for the transparent emulation of an existin

1995-04-13

1997-04-08

Treat, William M.

Boots, shoes, and leggings

395500, 364DIG1, G06F 9455

Patent

active

056196652

ABSTRACT:
The invention provides means and methods for extending an instruction-set architecture without impacting the software interface. This circumvents all software compatibility issues, and allows legacy software to benefit from new architectural extensions without recompilation and reassembly. The means employed are a translation engine for translating sequences of old architecture instructions into primary, new architecture instructions, and an extended instruction (EI) cache memory for storing the translations. A processor requesting a sequence of instructions will look first to the EI-cache for a translation, and if translations are unavailable, will look to a conventional cache memory for the sequence, and finally, if still unavailable, will look to a main memory.

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G.M. Silberman et al, "An Architectural Framework for Migration from CISC to Higher Performance Platforms", Conf. Proceedings, 1992 Int Conf. on Supercomuting, ACM Int. Conf on Supercomputing, Jul. 1992 pp.

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