Methods and apparatus for predicting unaligned memory access

Details Methods and apparatus for predicting unaligned memory access Methods and apparatus for predicting unaligned memory access

2005-02-17

2008-10-14

Chan, Eddie P (Department: 2183)

Electrical computers and digital processing systems: processing

Instruction alignment

C712S245000, C711S125000

Reexamination Certificate

active

07437537

ABSTRACT:
In an instruction execution pipeline, the misalignment of memory access instructions is predicted. Based on the prediction, an additional micro-operation is generated in the pipeline prior to the effective address generation of the memory access instruction. The additional micro-operation accesses the memory falling across a predetermined address boundary. Predicting the misalignment and generating a micro-operation early in the pipeline ensures that sufficient pipeline control resources are available to generate and track the additional micro-operation, avoiding a pipeline flush if the resources are not available at the time of effective address generation. The misalignment prediction may employ known conditional branch prediction techniques, such as a flag, a bimodal counter, a local predictor, a global predictor, and combined predictors. A misalignment predictor may be enabled or biased by a memory access instruction flag or misaligned instruction type.

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