A streaming engine employed in a digital data processor may specify a fixed read-only data stream defined by plural nested loops. An address generator produces address of data elements for the nested loops. A steam head register stores data elements next to be supplied to functional units for use as operands. A stream template register independently specifies a linear address or a circular address mode for each of the nested loops.

A device includes a circular buffer, which, in operation, is organized into a plurality of subsets of buffers, and control circuitry coupled to the circular buffer. The control circuitry, in operation, receives a memory load command to load a set of data into the circular buffer. The memory load command has an offset parameter indicating a data offset and a subset parameter indicating a subset of the plurality of subsets into which the circular buffer is organized. The control circuitry responds to the command by identifying a set of buffer addresses of the circular buffer based on a value of the offset parameter and a value of the subset parameter, and loading the set of data into the circular buffer using the identified set of buffer addresses.

Accessing a circular buffer in memory from a processor may be performed with the aid of precomputed values stored in a pointer descriptor field of a processor storage element, such as a register. The pointer descriptor may store a precomputed value for calculating a memory address in the circular buffer, which may include two values, in which the two values are based, at least in part, on the size of the circular buffer, but neither be the size of the circular buffer. The first value may be used to derive a starting memory location for a circular buffer. The second value may be used in combination with the first value to calculate an end memory location. The start and end locations or addresses, along with the precomputed stored values, are then used to calculate the next address based on the current address of a circular buffer in an efficient manner.

A method of performing quadrature mirror filter (QMF) synthesis filtering includes recording new samples corresponding to a current time slot at positions of samples to be discarded in a first array that includes modulated QMF sub-band samples. The method further includes extracting samples from the first array to remove aliasing between adjacent sub-bands, determining filter coefficients corresponding to the extracted samples by using modulo operation, and synthesizing a time domain sample where aliasing is removed by using the extracted samples and the filter coefficients.

Systems and methods are disclosed for secure control flow prediction. Some implementations may be used to eliminate or mitigate the Spectre-class of attacks in a processor. For example, an integrated circuit (e.g., a processor) for executing instructions includes a control flow predictor with entries that include respective indications of whether the entry has been activated for use in a current process, wherein the integrated circuit is configured to access the indication in one of the entries that is associated with a control flow instruction that is scheduled for execution; determine, based on the indication, whether the entry of the control flow predictor associated with the control flow instruction is activated for use in a current process; and responsive to a determination that the entry is not activated for use in the current process, apply a constraint on speculative execution based on control flow prediction for the control flow instruction.

An apparatus and method are provided for performing vector processing operations. In particular the apparatus has processing circuitry to perform the vector processing operations and an instruction decoder to decode vector instructions to control the processing circuitry to perform the vector processing operations specified by the vector instructions. The instruction decoder is responsive to a vector generating instruction identifying a scalar start value and wrapping control information, to control the processing circuitry to generate a vector comprising a plurality of elements. In particular, the processing circuitry is arranged to generate the vector such that the first element in the plurality is dependent on the scalar start value, and the values of the plurality of elements follow a regularly progressing sequence that is constrained to wrap as required to ensure that each value is within bounds determined from the wrapping control information. The vector generating instruction can be useful in a variety of situations, a particular use case being to implement a circular addressing mode within memory, where the vector generating instruction can be coupled with an associated vector memory access instruction. Such an approach can remove the need to provide additional logic within the memory access path to support such circular addressing.

A system of electronic modules is described, along with a method of assigning addresses to the modules. The modules are communicatively connected along a communication path, and are also communicatively connected to an address bus. Adders are positioned along the address bus, with at least one adder located between each pair of modules. When any module is assigned an address, its adjacent adder will increment the address and assign the incremented address to the next-adjacent module.

A system of electronic modules is described, along with a method of assigning addresses to the modules. The modules are communicatively connected along a communication path, and are also communicatively connected to an address bus. Adders are positioned along the address bus, with at least one adder located between each pair of modules. When any module is assigned an address, its adjacent adder will increment the address and assign the incremented address to the next-adjacent module.

A streaming engine employed in a digital data processor specifies a fixed read only data stream defined by plural nested loops. An address generator produces address of data elements for the nested loops. A steam head register stores data elements next to be supplied to functional units for use as operands. A stream template register specifies a circular address mode for the loop, first and second block size numbers and a circular address block size selection. For a first circular address block size selection the block size corresponds to the first block size number. For a first circular address block size selection the block size corresponds to the first block size number. For a second circular address block size selection the block size corresponds to a sum of the first block size number and the second block size number.

A streaming engine employed in a digital data processor may specify a fixed read-only data stream defined by plural nested loops. An address generator produces address of data elements for the nested loops. A steam head register stores data elements next to be supplied to functional units for use as operands. A stream template register independently specifies a linear address or a circular address mode for each of the nested loops.