Systems and methods are disclosed for scheduling threads on a processor that has at least two different core types, such as an asymmetric multiprocessing system. Each core type can run at a plurality of selectable voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) states. Threads from a plurality of processes can be grouped into thread groups. Execution metrics are accumulated for threads of a thread group and fed into a plurality of tunable controllers for the thread group. A closed loop performance control (CLPC) system determines a control effort for the thread group and maps the control effort to a recommended core type and DVFS state. A closed loop thermal and power management system can limit the control effort determined by the CLPC for a thread group, and limit the power, core type, and DVFS states for the system. Deferred interrupts can be used to increase performance.

A method for a controller to execute a program comprising a sequence of functions on an accelerator with a pipelined architecture comprising a microcode buffer. The method comprises executing a function of the program as a sequence of operations, wherein the sequence of operations is represented by a sequence of templates, determining whether the template is non-colliding with previously inserted templates in the microcode buffer, determining whether data in local memory will be referenced before all previously inserted templates have taken effect, determining whether registers will be referenced before all previously inserted templates in the microcode buffer have taken effect, when it is determined that the template fits, that resources are available, that local data memory accesses will not collide, and that register accesses will not collide: creating a sequence of microcode instructions in the template, and inserting the template into the microcode buffer.

Disclosed is a method for designing an application task architecture for an electronic control unit based on an AUTOSAR operating system that is adaptable to a plurality of microcontrollers. Prior to association with a microcontroller, the method involves developing the application task architecture by using at least one virtual core different from the one or more cores of the microcontroller, the various tasks being assigned respectively to the at least one virtual core, and associating the at least one virtual core with the one or more cores of the microcontroller so as to allocate tasks assigned to the at least one virtual core to the core or among the cores of the microcontroller.

A 3D NAND memory device is provided in which control is performed by two microcontroller units (MCU). During manufacture of the memory device, bug fixes required for the controller may be addressed using a software solution by which an instruction requiring correction in one of the two MCUs is replaced with a corrected instruction stored in a RAM.

A memory device in accordance with a described method of operation includes a read only memory (ROM) address controller and a suspend signal generator. The ROM address controller is configured to sequentially output a plurality of operation ROM addresses at which ROM codes to be executed in response to an operation command are stored, and to suspend output of the plurality of operation ROM addresses in response to a suspend signal. The suspend signal generator is configured to generate the suspend signal that is activated during a preset period depending on whether a suspend ROM address is identical to an operation ROM address, among the plurality of operation ROM addresses, currently being output. The suspend ROM address is an address at which a ROM code, execution of which is to be suspended, among the ROM codes, is stored.

An apparatus and method for efficient microcode patching. For example, one embodiment of an apparatus comprises: a package comprising one or more integrated circuit dies, the one or more integrated circuit dies comprising: a plurality of cores; and a security controller coupled to the plurality of cores, a first core of the plurality of cores comprising: a decoder to decode a microcode patching instruction, the microcode patching instruction comprising an operand to be used to identify an address; and execution circuitry to execute the microcode patching instruction, wherein responsive to the microcode patching instruction, the execution circuitry and/or security controller are to: retrieve a microcode patch from a location in memory based on the address, validate the microcode patch, apply the microcode patch to update or replace microcode associated with the one or more integrated circuit dies, and transmit the microcode patch to a persistent storage device; wherein the microcode patch is to be subsequently retrieved from the persistent storage device by one or more external security controllers of one or more external integrated circuit dies, the one or more external security controllers to cause the microcode patch to be applied to update or replace microcode associated with the one or more external integrated circuit dies.

Processing circuitry performs data processing operations in response to instructions fetched from a cache or memory or micro-operations decoded from the instructions. Sampling circuitry selects a subset of instructions or micro-operations as sampled operations to be profiled. Profiling circuitry captures, in response to processing of an instruction or micro-operation selected as a sampled operation, a sample record specifying an operation type of the sampled operation and information about behaviour of the sampled operation which is directly attributed to the sampled operation. The profiling circuitry can include, in the sample record for a sampled operation corresponding to a given instruction, a reference instruction address indicator indicative of an address of a reference instruction appearing earlier or later in program order than the given instruction, for which control flow is sequential between any instructions occurring between the reference instruction and the given instruction in program order.

Techniques are provided for enabling cross-process coordination between multiple instances of given microservice in a cloud computing system. A method includes running a plurality of active instances of a given microservice of a computing system comprising a distributed microservices architecture. A first active instance of the plurality of active instances executes a portion of program code of the given microservice to perform a job. The portion of the program code of the given microservice includes an instance synchronization element which is configured to enable cross-process coordination between the plurality of active instances of the given microservice with the support of a collaboration service. The first active instance utilizes the instance synchronization element to communicate with the collaboration service and cause the collaboration service to execute a process associated with the instance synchronization element to thereby implement the cross-process coordination between the plurality of active instances for executing the job.

Apparatus and methods are disclosed for controlling execution of memory access instructions in a block-based processor architecture using a hardware structure that indicates a relative ordering of memory access instruction in an instruction block. In one example of the disclosed technology, a method of executing an instruction block having a plurality of memory load and/or memory store instructions includes selecting a next memory load or memory store instruction to execute based on dependencies encoded within the block, and on a store vector that stores data indicating which memory load and memory store instructions in the instruction block have executed. The store vector can be masked using a store mask. The store mask can be generated when decoding the instruction block, or copied from an instruction block header. Based on the encoded dependencies and the masked store vector, the next instruction can issue when its dependencies are available.

A microprocessor includes compressed and uncompressed microcode memory storages, having N-bit wide and M-bit wide addressable words, respectively, where N<M. The microprocessor also includes a fetch unit, an instruction translator, and an execution stage. When the instruction translator receives an architectural instruction, it writes information identifying source and destination registers specified by the architectural instruction to an indirection register. It also issues one or more fetch addresses to retrieve a sequence of one or more microcode instructions from one of the uncompressed microcode memory storage and the compressed microcode memory storage to implement the architectural instruction. It merges information in the indirection register with the sequence of one or more microcode instructions to generate a sequence of one or more implementing microinstructions.