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.

Disclosed embodiments relate to systems and methods for performing instructions to transform matrices into a row-interleaved format. In one example, a processor includes fetch and decode circuitry to fetch and decode an instruction having fields to specify an opcode and locations of source and destination matrices, wherein the opcode indicates that the processor is to transform the specified source matrix into the specified destination matrix having the row-interleaved format; and execution circuitry to respond to the decoded instruction by transforming the specified source matrix into the specified RowInt-formatted destination matrix by interleaving J elements of each J-element sub-column of the specified source matrix in either row-major or column-major order into a K-wide submatrix of the specified destination matrix, the K-wide submatrix having K columns and enough rows to hold the J elements.

An 8-bit microprocessor has a program memory having a 16-bit instruction word size and a data memory having an 8-bit data size. An instruction word has a payload size for an address of up to 12 bits. The microprocessor furthermore has a central processing unit coupled with the program memory and the data memory, a bank select register configured to select one of up to 64 memory banks, and an indirect addressing register operable to address up to 16 KB of data memory. The CPU is configured to execute a first move instruction having two instruction words and being configured to only access the lower 4 KB of the data memory and a second move instruction having three instruction words and configured to access the entire data memory.

Disclosed embodiments relate to systems and methods for performing instructions to transform matrices into a row-interleaved format. In one example, a processor includes fetch and decode circuitry to fetch and decode an instruction having fields to specify an opcode and locations of source and destination matrices, wherein the opcode indicates that the processor is to transform the specified source matrix into the specified destination matrix having the row-interleaved format; and execution circuitry to respond to the decoded instruction by transforming the specified source matrix into the specified RowInt-formatted destination matrix by interleaving J elements of each J-element sub-column of the specified source matrix in either row-major or column-major order into a K-wide submatrix of the specified destination matrix, the K-wide submatrix having K columns and enough rows to hold the J elements.

Provided is a data processing method including the operations of storing, in a register, a first immediate portion included in a first instruction, from among the first immediate portion and a second immediate portion that constitute an immediate value, which is an operand; determining the immediate value by catenating the second immediate portion included in a second instruction with the stored first immediate portion; and performing an operation by using a value indicated by the second instruction and the determined immediate value.

This invention discloses a novel paradigm, method and apparatus for Matrix Computing which include a novel machine architecture with an embedded storage space for holding matrices and arrays for computing which can be accessed by its columns or by its rows or both concurrently. A large capacity multi length instruction set with instructions and methods to load, store and compute with these matrices and arrays are also disclosed; a method and apparatus to secure, share, lock and unlock this embedded space for matrices under the control of an Operating System or a Virtual Machine Monitor by a plurality of threads and processes are also disclosed. A novel method and apparatus to handle immediate operands used by Immediate Instructions are also disclosed. The structure of the instructions with some key fields and a method for determining instruction length easily are also disclosed.

A hardware-software co-designed processor includes a front end to decode an instruction, an execution unit to execute the instruction, an auxiliary cache to store auxiliary information for consumption during execution of the instruction, an instruction blender, and a retirement unit to retire the instruction. The auxiliary information may include long immediate values, non-working instructions for emulating an untranslated instruction stream, or execution hints, and is not decoded by the front end. The auxiliary cache includes circuitry to receive the auxiliary information from a binary translator, to store the auxiliary information in the auxiliary cache, and to provide the auxiliary information to the instruction blender prior to execution. The instruction blender includes circuitry to receive the auxiliary information, to blend the instruction with the auxiliary information, and to provide the blended instruction to the execution unit. Use of the auxiliary cache may reduce fetch and decode bandwidth requirements.

Method and apparatus for performing a shift and XOR operation. In one embodiment, an apparatus includes execution resources to execute a first instruction. In response to the first instruction, said execution resources perform a shift and XOR on at least one value.

Methods and apparatus are provided for optimizing a processor core. Common processor subcircuitry is used to perform calculations for various types of instructions, including branch and non-branch instructions. Increasing the commonality of calculations across different instruction types allows branch instructions to jump to byte aligned memory address even if supported instructions are multi-byte or word aligned.

Technology for fusing certain load instructions and compare-immediate instructions in a computer processor having a load-store architecture with respect to transferring data between memory and registers of the computer processor. In some embodiments the load and compare-immediate instructions are consecutive. In some embodiments, the instructions are only merged if: (i) the respective RA and RT fields of the two instructions match; (ii) the immediate field of the compare-immediate instruction has a certain value, or falls within a range of certain values; and/or (iii) the instructions are received in a consecutive manner.