Patent Application
20170177363
The present disclosure pertains to the field of processing logic, microprocessors, and associated instruction set architecture that, when executed by the processor or other processing logic, perform logical, mathematical, or other functional operations.
Multiprocessor systems are becoming more and more common. Applications of multiprocessor systems include dynamic domain partitioning all the way down to desktop computing. In order to take advantage of multiprocessor systems, code to be executed may be separated into multiple threads for execution by various processing entities. Each thread may be executed in parallel with one another. Instructions as they are received on a processor may be decoded into terms or instruction words that are native, or more native, for execution on the processor. Processors may be implemented in a system on chip. Indirect read and write accesses to memory by way of indices stored in arrays may be used in cryptography, graph traversal, sorting, and sparse matrix applications.
Embodiments are illustrated by way of example and not limitation in the Figures of the accompanying drawings:
The following description describes instructions and processing logic for performing vector operations to load indices from an array of indices and gather elements from locations in sparse memory based on those indices on a processing apparatus. Such a processing apparatus may include an out-of-order processor. In the following description, numerous specific details such as processing logic, processor types, micro-architectural conditions, events, enablement mechanisms, and the like are set forth in order to provide a more thorough understanding of embodiments of the present disclosure. It will be appreciated, however, by one skilled in the art that the embodiments may be practiced without such specific details. Additionally, some well-known structures, circuits, and the like have not been shown in detail to avoid unnecessarily obscuring embodiments of the present disclosure.
Although the following embodiments are described with reference to a processor, other embodiments are applicable to other types of integrated circuits and logic devices. Similar techniques and teachings of embodiments of the present disclosure may be applied to other types of circuits or semiconductor devices that may benefit from higher pipeline throughput and improved performance. The teachings of embodiments of the present disclosure are applicable to any processor or machine that performs data manipulations. However, the embodiments are not limited to processors or machines that perform 512-bit, 256-bit, 128-bit, 64-bit, 32-bit, or 16-bit data operations and may be applied to any processor and machine in which manipulation or management of data may be performed. In addition, the following description provides examples, and the accompanying drawings show various examples for the purposes of illustration. However, these examples should not be construed in a limiting sense as they are merely intended to provide examples of embodiments of the present disclosure rather than to provide an exhaustive list of all possible implementations of embodiments of the present disclosure.
Although the below examples describe instruction handling and distribution in the context of execution units and logic circuits, other embodiments of the present disclosure may be accomplished by way of a data or instructions stored on a machine-readable, tangible medium, which when performed by a machine cause the machine to perform functions consistent with at least one embodiment of the disclosure. In one embodiment, functions associated with embodiments of the present disclosure are embodied in machine-executable instructions. The instructions may be used to cause a general-purpose or special-purpose processor that may be programmed with the instructions to perform the steps of the present disclosure. Embodiments of the present disclosure may be provided as a computer program product or software which may include a machine or computer-readable medium having stored thereon instructions which may be used to program a computer (or other electronic devices) to perform one or more operations according to embodiments of the present disclosure. Furthermore, steps of embodiments of the present disclosure might be performed by specific hardware components that contain fixed-function logic for performing the steps, or by any combination of programmed computer components and fixed-function hardware components.
Instructions used to program logic to perform embodiments of the present disclosure may be stored within a memory in the system, such as DRAM, cache, flash memory, or other storage. Furthermore, the instructions may be distributed via a network or by way of other computer-readable media. Thus a machine-readable medium may include any mechanism for storing or transmitting information in a form readable by a machine (e.g., a computer), but is not limited to, floppy diskettes, optical disks, Compact Disc, Read-Only Memory (CD-ROMs), and magneto-optical disks, Read-Only Memory (ROMs), Random Access Memory (RAM), Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EPROM), Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EEPROM), magnetic or optical cards, flash memory, or a tangible, machine-readable storage used in the transmission of information over the Internet via electrical, optical, acoustical or other forms of propagated signals (e.g., carrier waves, infrared signals, digital signals, etc.). Accordingly, the computer-readable medium may include any type of tangible machine-readable medium suitable for storing or transmitting electronic instructions or information in a form readable by a machine (e.g., a computer).
A design may go through various stages, from creation to simulation to fabrication. Data representing a design may represent the design in a number of manners. First, as may be useful in simulations, the hardware may be represented using a hardware description language or another functional description language. Additionally, a circuit level model with logic and/or transistor gates may be produced at some stages of the design process. Furthermore, designs, at some stage, may reach a level of data representing the physical placement of various devices in the hardware model. In cases wherein some semiconductor fabrication techniques are used, the data representing the hardware model may be the data specifying the presence or absence of various features on different mask layers for masks used to produce the integrated circuit. In any representation of the design, the data may be stored in any form of a machine-readable medium. A memory or a magnetic or optical storage such as a disc may be the machine-readable medium to store information transmitted via optical or electrical wave modulated or otherwise generated to transmit such information. When an electrical carrier wave indicating or carrying the code or design is transmitted, to the extent that copying, buffering, or retransmission of the electrical signal is performed, a new copy may be made. Thus, a communication provider or a network provider may store on a tangible, machine-readable medium, at least temporarily, an article, such as information encoded into a carrier wave, embodying techniques of embodiments of the present disclosure.
In modern processors, a number of different execution units may be used to process and execute a variety of code and instructions. Some instructions may be quicker to complete while others may take a number of clock cycles to complete. The faster the throughput of instructions, the better the overall performance of the processor. Thus it would be advantageous to have as many instructions execute as fast as possible. However, there may be certain instructions that have greater complexity and require more in terms of execution time and processor resources, such as floating point instructions, load/store operations, data moves, etc.
As more computer systems are used in internet, text, and multimedia applications, additional processor support has been introduced over time. In one embodiment, an instruction set may be associated with one or more computer architectures, including data types, instructions, register architecture, addressing modes, memory architecture, interrupt and exception handling, and external input and output (I/O).
In one embodiment, the instruction set architecture (ISA) may be implemented by one or more micro-architectures, which may include processor logic and circuits used to implement one or more instruction sets. Accordingly, processors with different micro-architectures may share at least a portion of a common instruction set. For example, Intel® Pentium 4 processors, Intel® Core™ processors, and processors from Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. of Sunnyvale Calif. implement nearly identical versions of the x86 instruction set (with some extensions that have been added with newer versions), but have different internal designs. Similarly, processors designed by other processor development companies, such as ARM Holdings, Ltd., MIPS, or their licensees or adopters, may share at least a portion of a common instruction set, but may include different processor designs. For example, the same register architecture of the ISA may be implemented in different ways in different micro-architectures using new or well-known techniques, including dedicated physical registers, one or more dynamically allocated physical registers using a register renaming mechanism (e.g., the use of a Register Alias Table (RAT), a Reorder Buffer (ROB) and a retirement register file. In one embodiment, registers may include one or more registers, register architectures, register files, or other register sets that may or may not be addressable by a software programmer.
An instruction may include one or more instruction formats. In one embodiment, an instruction format may indicate various fields (number of bits, location of bits, etc.) to specify, among other things, the operation to be performed and the operands on which that operation will be performed. In a further embodiment, some instruction formats may be further defined by instruction templates (or sub-formats). For example, the instruction templates of a given instruction format may be defined to have different subsets of the instruction format's fields and/or defined to have a given field interpreted differently. In one embodiment, an instruction may be expressed using an instruction format (and, if defined, in a given one of the instruction templates of that instruction format) and specifies or indicates the operation and the operands upon which the operation will operate.
Scientific, financial, auto-vectorized general purpose, RMS (recognition, mining, and synthesis), and visual and multimedia applications (e.g., 2D/3D graphics, image processing, video compression/decompression, voice recognition algorithms and audio manipulation) may require the same operation to be performed on a large number of data items. In one embodiment, Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) refers to a type of instruction that causes a processor to perform an operation on multiple data elements. SIMD technology may be used in processors that may logically divide the bits in a register into a number of fixed-sized or variable-sized data elements, each of which represents a separate value. For example, in one embodiment, the bits in a 64-bit register may be organized as a source operand containing four separate 16-bit data elements, each of which represents a separate 16-bit value. This type of data may be referred to as ‘packed’ data type or ‘vector’ data type, and operands of this data type may be referred to as packed data operands or vector operands. In one embodiment, a packed data item or vector may be a sequence of packed data elements stored within a single register, and a packed data operand or a vector operand may a source or destination operand of a SIMD instruction (or ‘packed data instruction’ or a ‘vector instruction’). In one embodiment, a SIMD instruction specifies a single vector operation to be performed on two source vector operands to generate a destination vector operand (also referred to as a result vector operand) of the same or different size, with the same or different number of data elements, and in the same or different data element order.
SIMD technology, such as that employed by the Intel® Core™ processors having an instruction set including x86, MMX™, Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE), SSE2, SSE3, SSE4.1, and SSE4.2 instructions, ARM processors, such as the ARM Cortex® family of processors having an instruction set including the Vector Floating Point (VFP) and/or NEON instructions, and MIPS processors, such as the Loongson family of processors developed by the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has enabled a significant improvement in application performance (Core™ and MMX™ are registered trademarks or trademarks of Intel Corporation of Santa Clara, Calif.).
In one embodiment, destination and source registers/data may be generic terms to represent the source and destination of the corresponding data or operation. In some embodiments, they may be implemented by registers, memory, or other storage areas having other names or functions than those depicted. For example, in one embodiment, “DEST1” may be a temporary storage register or other storage area, whereas “SRC1” and “SRC2” may be a first and second source storage register or other storage area, and so forth. In other embodiments, two or more of the SRC and DEST storage areas may correspond to different data storage elements within the same storage area (e.g., a SIMD register). In one embodiment, one of the source registers may also act as a destination register by, for example, writing back the result of an operation performed on the first and second source data to one of the two source registers serving as a destination registers.
Embodiments are not limited to computer systems. Embodiments of the present disclosure may be used in other devices such as handheld devices and embedded applications. Some examples of handheld devices include cellular phones, Internet Protocol devices, digital cameras, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and handheld PCs. Embedded applications may include a micro controller, a digital signal processor (DSP), system on a chip, network computers (NetPC), set-top boxes, network hubs, wide area network (WAN) switches, or any other system that may perform one or more instructions in accordance with at least one embodiment.
Computer system 100 may include a processor 102 that may include one or more execution units 108 to perform an algorithm to perform at least one instruction in accordance with one embodiment of the present disclosure. One embodiment may be described in the context of a single processor desktop or server system, but other embodiments may be included in a multiprocessor system. System 100 may be an example of a ‘hub’ system architecture. System 100 may include a processor 102 for processing data signals. Processor 102 may include a complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessor, a reduced instruction set computing (RISC) microprocessor, a very long instruction word (VLIW) microprocessor, a processor implementing a combination of instruction sets, or any other processor device, such as a digital signal processor, for example. In one embodiment, processor 102 may be coupled to a processor bus 110 that may transmit data signals between processor 102 and other components in system 100. The elements of system 100 may perform conventional functions that are well known to those familiar with the art.
In one embodiment, processor 102 may include a Level 1 (L1) internal cache memory 104. Depending on the architecture, the processor 102 may have a single internal cache or multiple levels of internal cache. In another embodiment, the cache memory may reside external to processor 102. Other embodiments may also include a combination of both internal and external caches depending on the particular implementation and needs. Register file 106 may store different types of data in various registers including integer registers, floating point registers, status registers, and instruction pointer register.
Execution unit 108, including logic to perform integer and floating point operations, also resides in processor 102. Processor 102 may also include a microcode (ucode) ROM that stores microcode for certain macroinstructions. In one embodiment, execution unit 108 may include logic to handle a packed instruction set 109. By including the packed instruction set 109 in the instruction set of a general-purpose processor 102, along with associated circuitry to execute the instructions, the operations used by many multimedia applications may be performed using packed data in a general-purpose processor 102. Thus, many multimedia applications may be accelerated and executed more efficiently by using the full width of a processor's data bus for performing operations on packed data. This may eliminate the need to transfer smaller units of data across the processor's data bus to perform one or more operations one data element at a time.
Embodiments of an execution unit 108 may also be used in micro controllers, embedded processors, graphics devices, DSPs, and other types of logic circuits. System 100 may include a memory 120. Memory 120 may be implemented as a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) device, a static random access memory (SRAM) device, flash memory device, or other memory device. Memory 120 may store instructions 119 and/or data 121 represented by data signals that may be executed by processor 102.
A system logic chip 116 may be coupled to processor bus 110 and memory 120. System logic chip 116 may include a memory controller hub (MCH). Processor 102 may communicate with MCH 116 via a processor bus 110. MCH 116 may provide a high bandwidth memory path 118 to memory 120 for storage of instructions 119 and data 121 and for storage of graphics commands, data and textures. MCH 116 may direct data signals between processor 102, memory 120, and other components in system 100 and to bridge the data signals between processor bus 110, memory 120, and system I/O 122. In some embodiments, the system logic chip 116 may provide a graphics port for coupling to a graphics controller 112. MCH 116 may be coupled to memory 120 through a memory interface 118. Graphics card 112 may be coupled to MCH 116 through an Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) interconnect 114.
System 100 may use a proprietary hub interface bus 122 to couple MCH 116 to I/O controller hub (ICH) 130. In one embodiment, ICH 130 may provide direct connections to some I/O devices via a local I/O bus. The local I/O bus may include a high-speed I/O bus for connecting peripherals to memory 120, chipset, and processor 102. Examples may include the audio controller 129, firmware hub (flash BIOS) 128, wireless transceiver 126, data storage 124, legacy I/O controller 123 containing user input interface 125 (which may include a keyboard interface), a serial expansion port 127 such as Universal Serial Bus (USB), and a network controller 134. Data storage device 124 may comprise a hard disk drive, a floppy disk drive, a CD-ROM device, a flash memory device, or other mass storage device.
For another embodiment of a system, an instruction in accordance with one embodiment may be used with a system on a chip. One embodiment of a system on a chip comprises of a processor and a memory. The memory for one such system may include a flash memory. The flash memory may be located on the same die as the processor and other system components. Additionally, other logic blocks such as a memory controller or graphics controller may also be located on a system on a chip.
Computer system 140 comprises a processing core 159 for performing at least one instruction in accordance with one embodiment. In one embodiment, processing core 159 represents a processing unit of any type of architecture, including but not limited to a CISC, a RISC or a VLIW type architecture. Processing core 159 may also be suitable for manufacture in one or more process technologies and by being represented on a machine-readable media in sufficient detail, may be suitable to facilitate said manufacture.
Processing core 159 comprises an execution unit 142, a set of register files 145, and a decoder 144. Processing core 159 may also include additional circuitry (not shown) which may be unnecessary to the understanding of embodiments of the present disclosure. Execution unit 142 may execute instructions received by processing core 159. In addition to performing typical processor instructions, execution unit 142 may perform instructions in packed instruction set 143 for performing operations on packed data formats. Packed instruction set 143 may include instructions for performing embodiments of the disclosure and other packed instructions. Execution unit 142 may be coupled to register file 145 by an internal bus. Register file 145 may represent a storage area on processing core 159 for storing information, including data. As previously mentioned, it is understood that the storage area may store the packed data might not be critical. Execution unit 142 may be coupled to decoder 144. Decoder 144 may decode instructions received by processing core 159 into control signals and/or microcode entry points. In response to these control signals and/or microcode entry points, execution unit 142 performs the appropriate operations. In one embodiment, the decoder may interpret the opcode of the instruction, which will indicate what operation should be performed on the corresponding data indicated within the instruction.
Processing core 159 may be coupled with bus 141 for communicating with various other system devices, which may include but are not limited to, for example, synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM) control 146, static random access memory (SRAM) control 147, burst flash memory interface 148, personal computer memory card international association (PCMCIA)/compact flash (CF) card control 149, liquid crystal display (LCD) control 150, direct memory access (DMA) controller 151, and alternative bus master interface 152. In one embodiment, data processing system 140 may also comprise an I/O bridge 154 for communicating with various I/O devices via an I/O bus 153. Such I/O devices may include but are not limited to, for example, universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART) 155, universal serial bus (USB) 156, Bluetooth wireless UART 157 and I/O expansion interface 158.
One embodiment of data processing system 140 provides for mobile, network and/or wireless communications and a processing core 159 that may perform SIMD operations including a text string comparison operation. Processing core 159 may be programmed with various audio, video, imaging and communications algorithms including discrete transformations such as a Walsh-Hadamard transform, a fast Fourier transform (FFT), a discrete cosine transform (DCT), and their respective inverse transforms; compression/decompression techniques such as color space transformation, video encode motion estimation or video decode motion compensation; and modulation/demodulation (MODEM) functions such as pulse coded modulation (PCM).
In one embodiment, SIMD coprocessor 161 comprises an execution unit 162 and a set of register files 164. One embodiment of main processor 166 comprises a decoder 165 to recognize instructions of instruction set 163 including instructions in accordance with one embodiment for execution by execution unit 162. In other embodiments, SIMD coprocessor 161 also comprises at least part of decoder 165 (shown as 165B) to decode instructions of instruction set 163. Processing core 170 may also include additional circuitry (not shown) which may be unnecessary to the understanding of embodiments of the present disclosure.
In operation, main processor 166 executes a stream of data processing instructions that control data processing operations of a general type including interactions with cache memory 167, and input/output system 168. Embedded within the stream of data processing instructions may be SIMD coprocessor instructions. Decoder 165 of main processor 166 recognizes these SIMD coprocessor instructions as being of a type that should be executed by an attached SIMD coprocessor 161. Accordingly, main processor 166 issues these SIMD coprocessor instructions (or control signals representing SIMD coprocessor instructions) on the coprocessor bus 166. From coprocessor bus 171, these instructions may be received by any attached SIMD coprocessors. In this case, SIMD coprocessor 161 may accept and execute any received SIMD coprocessor instructions intended for it.
Data may be received via wireless interface 169 for processing by the SIMD coprocessor instructions. For one example, voice communication may be received in the form of a digital signal, which may be processed by the SIMD coprocessor instructions to regenerate digital audio samples representative of the voice communications. For another example, compressed audio and/or video may be received in the form of a digital bit stream, which may be processed by the SIMD coprocessor instructions to regenerate digital audio samples and/or motion video frames. In one embodiment of processing core 170, main processor 166, and a SIMD coprocessor 161 may be integrated into a single processing core 170 comprising an execution unit 162, a set of register files 164, and a decoder 165 to recognize instructions of instruction set 163 including instructions in accordance with one embodiment.
Some instructions may be converted into a single micro-op, whereas others need several micro-ops to complete the full operation. In one embodiment, if more than four micro-ops are needed to complete an instruction, decoder 228 may access microcode ROM 232 to perform the instruction. In one embodiment, an instruction may be decoded into a small number of micro ops for processing at instruction decoder 228. In another embodiment, an instruction may be stored within microcode ROM 232 should a number of micro-ops be needed to accomplish the operation. Trace cache 230 refers to an entry point programmable logic array (PLA) to determine a correct micro-instruction pointer for reading the micro-code sequences to complete one or more instructions in accordance with one embodiment from micro-code ROM 232. After microcode ROM 232 finishes sequencing micro-ops for an instruction, front end 201 of the machine may resume fetching micro-ops from trace cache 230.
Out-of-order execution engine 203 may prepare instructions for execution. The out-of-order execution logic has a number of buffers to smooth out and re-order the flow of instructions to optimize performance as they go down the pipeline and get scheduled for execution. The allocator logic in allocator/register renamer 215 allocates the machine buffers and resources that each uop needs in order to execute. The register renaming logic in allocator/register renamer 215 renames logic registers onto entries in a register file. The allocator 215 also allocates an entry for each uop in one of the two uop queues, one for memory operations (memory uop queue 207) and one for non-memory operations (integer/floating point uop queue 205), in front of the instruction schedulers: memory scheduler 209, fast scheduler 202, slow/general floating point scheduler 204, and simple floating point scheduler 206. Uop schedulers 202, 204, 206, determine when a uop is ready to execute based on the readiness of their dependent input register operand sources and the availability of the execution resources the uops need to complete their operation. Fast scheduler 202 of one embodiment may schedule on each half of the main clock cycle while the other schedulers may only schedule once per main processor clock cycle. The schedulers arbitrate for the dispatch ports to schedule uops for execution.
Register files 208, 210 may be arranged between schedulers 202, 204, 206, and execution units 212, 214, 216, 218, 220, 222, 224 in execution block 211. Each of register files 208, 210 perform integer and floating point operations, respectively. Each register file 208, 210, may include a bypass network that may bypass or forward just completed results that have not yet been written into the register file to new dependent uops. Integer register file 208 and floating point register file 210 may communicate data with the other. In one embodiment, integer register file 208 may be split into two separate register files, one register file for low-order thirty-two bits of data and a second register file for high order thirty-two bits of data. Floating point register file 210 may include 128-bit wide entries because floating point instructions typically have operands from 64 to 128 bits in width.
Execution block 211 may contain execution units 212, 214, 216, 218, 220, 222, 224. Execution units 212, 214, 216, 218, 220, 222, 224 may execute the instructions. Execution block 211 may include register files 208, 210 that store the integer and floating point data operand values that the micro-instructions need to execute. In one embodiment, processor 200 may comprise a number of execution units: address generation unit (AGU) 212, AGU 214, fast ALU 216, fast ALU 218, slow ALU 220, floating point ALU 222, floating point move unit 224. In another embodiment, floating point execution blocks 222, 224, may execute floating point, MMX, SIMD, and SSE, or other operations. In yet another embodiment, floating point ALU 222 may include a 64-bit by 64-bit floating point divider to execute divide, square root, and remainder micro-ops. In various embodiments, instructions involving a floating point value may be handled with the floating point hardware. In one embodiment, ALU operations may be passed to high-speed ALU execution units 216, 218. High-speed ALUs 216, 218 may execute fast operations with an effective latency of half a clock cycle. In one embodiment, most complex integer operations go to slow ALU 220 as slow ALU 220 may include integer execution hardware for long-latency type of operations, such as a multiplier, shifts, flag logic, and branch processing. Memory load/store operations may be executed by AGUs 212, 214. In one embodiment, integer ALUs 216, 218, 220 may perform integer operations on 64-bit data operands. In other embodiments, ALUs 216, 218, 220 may be implemented to support a variety of data bit sizes including sixteen, thirty-two, 128, 256, etc. Similarly, floating point units 222, 224 may be implemented to support a range of operands having bits of various widths. In one embodiment, floating point units 222, 224, may operate on 128-bit wide packed data operands in conjunction with SIMD and multimedia instructions.
In one embodiment, uops schedulers 202, 204, 206, dispatch dependent operations before the parent load has finished executing. As uops may be speculatively scheduled and executed in processor 200, processor 200 may also include logic to handle memory misses. If a data load misses in the data cache, there may be dependent operations in flight in the pipeline that have left the scheduler with temporarily incorrect data. A replay mechanism tracks and re-executes instructions that use incorrect data. Only the dependent operations might need to be replayed and the independent ones may be allowed to complete. The schedulers and replay mechanism of one embodiment of a processor may also be designed to catch instruction sequences for text string comparison operations.
The term “registers” may refer to the on-board processor storage locations that may be used as part of instructions to identify operands. In other words, registers may be those that may be usable from the outside of the processor (from a programmer's perspective). However, in some embodiments registers might not be limited to a particular type of circuit. Rather, a register may store data, provide data, and perform the functions described herein. The registers described herein may be implemented by circuitry within a processor using any number of different techniques, such as dedicated physical registers, dynamically allocated physical registers using register renaming, combinations of dedicated and dynamically allocated physical registers, etc. In one embodiment, integer registers store 32-bit integer data. A register file of one embodiment also contains eight multimedia SIMD registers for packed data. For the discussions below, the registers may be understood to be data registers designed to hold packed data, such as 64-bit wide MMX™ registers (also referred to as ‘mm’ registers in some instances) in microprocessors enabled with MMX technology from Intel Corporation of Santa Clara, Calif. These MMX registers, available in both integer and floating point forms, may operate with packed data elements that accompany SIMD and SSE instructions. Similarly, 128-bit wide XMM registers relating to SSE2, SSE3, SSE4, or beyond (referred to generically as “SSEx”) technology may hold such packed data operands. In one embodiment, in storing packed data and integer data, the registers do not need to differentiate between the two data types. In one embodiment, integer and floating point data may be contained in the same register file or different register files. Furthermore, in one embodiment, floating point and integer data may be stored in different registers or the same registers.
In the examples of the following figures, a number of data operands may be described.
Generally, a data element may include an individual piece of data that is stored in a single register or memory location with other data elements of the same length. In packed data sequences relating to SSEx technology, the number of data elements stored in a XMM register may be 128 bits divided by the length in bits of an individual data element. Similarly, in packed data sequences relating to MMX and SSE technology, the number of data elements stored in an MMX register may be 64 bits divided by the length in bits of an individual data element. Although the data types illustrated in
In
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Core 490 may be a reduced instruction set computing (RISC) core, a complex instruction set computing (CISC) core, a very long instruction word (VLIW) core, or a hybrid or alternative core type. In one embodiment, core 490 may be a special-purpose core, such as, for example, a network or communication core, compression engine, graphics core, or the like.
Front end unit 430 may include a branch prediction unit 432 coupled to an instruction cache unit 434. Instruction cache unit 434 may be coupled to an instruction translation lookaside buffer (TLB) 436. TLB 436 may be coupled to an instruction fetch unit 438, which is coupled to a decode unit 440. Decode unit 440 may decode instructions, and generate as an output one or more micro-operations, micro-code entry points, microinstructions, other instructions, or other control signals, which may be decoded from, or which otherwise reflect, or may be derived from, the original instructions. The decoder may be implemented using various different mechanisms. Examples of suitable mechanisms include, but are not limited to, look-up tables, hardware implementations, programmable logic arrays (PLAs), microcode read-only memories (ROMs), etc. In one embodiment, instruction cache unit 434 may be further coupled to a level 2 (L2) cache unit 476 in memory unit 470. Decode unit 440 may be coupled to a rename/allocator unit 452 in execution engine unit 450.
Execution engine unit 450 may include rename/allocator unit 452 coupled to a retirement unit 454 and a set of one or more scheduler units 456. Scheduler units 456 represent any number of different schedulers, including reservations stations, central instruction window, etc. Scheduler units 456 may be coupled to physical register file units 458. Each of physical register file units 458 represents one or more physical register files, different ones of which store one or more different data types, such as scalar integer, scalar floating point, packed integer, packed floating point, vector integer, vector floating point, etc., status (e.g., an instruction pointer that is the address of the next instruction to be executed), etc. Physical register file units 458 may be overlapped by retirement unit 454 to illustrate various ways in which register renaming and out-of-order execution may be implemented (e.g., using one or more reorder buffers and one or more retirement register files, using one or more future files, one or more history buffers, and one or more retirement register files; using register maps and a pool of registers; etc.). Generally, the architectural registers may be visible from the outside of the processor or from a programmer's perspective. The registers might not be limited to any known particular type of circuit. Various different types of registers may be suitable as long as they store and provide data as described herein. Examples of suitable registers include, but might not be limited to, dedicated physical registers, dynamically allocated physical registers using register renaming, combinations of dedicated and dynamically allocated physical registers, etc. Retirement unit 454 and physical register file units 458 may be coupled to execution clusters 460. Execution clusters 460 may include a set of one or more execution units 462 and a set of one or more memory access units 464. Execution units 462 may perform various operations (e.g., shifts, addition, subtraction, multiplication) and on various types of data (e.g., scalar floating point, packed integer, packed floating point, vector integer, vector floating point). While some embodiments may include a number of execution units dedicated to specific functions or sets of functions, other embodiments may include only one execution unit or multiple execution units that all perform all functions. Scheduler units 456, physical register file units 458, and execution clusters 460 are shown as being possibly plural because certain embodiments create separate pipelines for certain types of data/operations (e.g., a scalar integer pipeline, a scalar floating point/packed integer/packed floating point/vector integer/vector floating point pipeline, and/or a memory access pipeline that each have their own scheduler unit, physical register file unit, and/or execution cluster—and in the case of a separate memory access pipeline, certain embodiments may be implemented in which only the execution cluster of this pipeline has memory access units 464). It should also be understood that where separate pipelines are used, one or more of these pipelines may be out-of-order issue/execution and the rest in-order.
The set of memory access units 464 may be coupled to memory unit 470, which may include a data TLB unit 472 coupled to a data cache unit 474 coupled to a level 2 (L2) cache unit 476. In one exemplary embodiment, memory access units 464 may include a load unit, a store address unit, and a store data unit, each of which may be coupled to data TLB unit 472 in memory unit 470. L2 cache unit 476 may be coupled to one or more other levels of cache and eventually to a main memory.
By way of example, the exemplary register renaming, out-of-order issue/execution core architecture may implement pipeline 400 as follows: 1) instruction fetch 438 may perform fetch and length decoding stages 402 and 404; 2) decode unit 440 may perform decode stage 406; 3) rename/allocator unit 452 may perform allocation stage 408 and renaming stage 410; 4) scheduler units 456 may perform schedule stage 412; 5) physical register file units 458 and memory unit 470 may perform register read/memory read stage 414; execution cluster 460 may perform execute stage 416; 6) memory unit 470 and physical register file units 458 may perform write-back/memory-write stage 418; 7) various units may be involved in the performance of exception handling stage 422; and 8) retirement unit 454 and physical register file units 458 may perform commit stage 424.
Core 490 may support one or more instructions sets (e.g., the x86 instruction set (with some extensions that have been added with newer versions); the MIPS instruction set of MIPS Technologies of Sunnyvale, Calif.; the ARM instruction set (with optional additional extensions such as NEON) of ARM Holdings of Sunnyvale, Calif.).
It should be understood that the core may support multithreading (executing two or more parallel sets of operations or threads) in a variety of manners. Multithreading support may be performed by, for example, including time sliced multithreading, simultaneous multithreading (where a single physical core provides a logical core for each of the threads that physical core is simultaneously multithreading), or a combination thereof. Such a combination may include, for example, time sliced fetching and decoding and simultaneous multithreading thereafter such as in the Intel® Hyperthreading technology.
While register renaming may be described in the context of out-of-order execution, it should be understood that register renaming may be used in an in-order architecture. While the illustrated embodiment of the processor may also include a separate instruction and data cache units 434/474 and a shared L2 cache unit 476, other embodiments may have a single internal cache for both instructions and data, such as, for example, a Level 1 (L1) internal cache, or multiple levels of internal cache. In some embodiments, the system may include a combination of an internal cache and an external cache that may be external to the core and/or the processor. In other embodiments, all of the caches may be external to the core and/or the processor.
Processor 500 may include any suitable mechanism for interconnecting cores 502, system agent 510, and caches 506, and graphics module 560. In one embodiment, processor 500 may include a ring-based interconnect unit 508 to interconnect cores 502, system agent 510, and caches 506, and graphics module 560. In other embodiments, processor 500 may include any number of well-known techniques for interconnecting such units. Ring-based interconnect unit 508 may utilize memory control units 552 to facilitate interconnections.
Processor 500 may include a memory hierarchy comprising one or more levels of caches within the cores, one or more shared cache units such as caches 506, or external memory (not shown) coupled to the set of integrated memory controller units 552. Caches 506 may include any suitable cache. In one embodiment, caches 506 may include one or more mid-level caches, such as level 2 (L2), level 3 (L3), level 4 (L4), or other levels of cache, a last level cache (LLC), and/or combinations thereof.
In various embodiments, one or more of cores 502 may perform multi-threading. System agent 510 may include components for coordinating and operating cores 502. System agent unit 510 may include for example a power control unit (PCU). The PCU may be or include logic and components needed for regulating the power state of cores 502. System agent 510 may include a display engine 512 for driving one or more externally connected displays or graphics module 560. System agent 510 may include an interface 514 for communications busses for graphics. In one embodiment, interface 514 may be implemented by PCI Express (PCIe). In a further embodiment, interface 514 may be implemented by PCI Express Graphics (PEG). System agent 510 may include a direct media interface (DMI) 516. DMI 516 may provide links between different bridges on a motherboard or other portion of a computer system. System agent 510 may include a PCIe bridge 518 for providing PCIe links to other elements of a computing system. PCIe bridge 518 may be implemented using a memory controller 520 and coherence logic 522.
Cores 502 may be implemented in any suitable manner. Cores 502 may be homogenous or heterogeneous in terms of architecture and/or instruction set. In one embodiment, some of cores 502 may be in-order while others may be out-of-order. In another embodiment, two or more of cores 502 may execute the same instruction set, while others may execute only a subset of that instruction set or a different instruction set.
Processor 500 may include a general-purpose processor, such as a Core™ i3, i5, i7, 2 Duo and Quad, Xeon™, Itanium™, XScale™ or StrongARM™ processor, which may be available from Intel Corporation, of Santa Clara, Calif. Processor 500 may be provided from another company, such as ARM Holdings, Ltd, MIPS, etc. Processor 500 may be a special-purpose processor, such as, for example, a network or communication processor, compression engine, graphics processor, co-processor, embedded processor, or the like. Processor 500 may be implemented on one or more chips. Processor 500 may be a part of and/or may be implemented on one or more substrates using any of a number of process technologies, such as, for example, BiCMOS, CMOS, or NMOS.
In one embodiment, a given one of caches 506 may be shared by multiple ones of cores 502. In another embodiment, a given one of caches 506 may be dedicated to one of cores 502. The assignment of caches 506 to cores 502 may be handled by a cache controller or other suitable mechanism. A given one of caches 506 may be shared by two or more cores 502 by implementing time-slices of a given cache 506.
Graphics module 560 may implement an integrated graphics processing subsystem. In one embodiment, graphics module 560 may include a graphics processor. Furthermore, graphics module 560 may include a media engine 565. Media engine 565 may provide media encoding and video decoding.
Front end 570 may be implemented in any suitable manner, such as fully or in part by front end 201 as described above. In one embodiment, front end 570 may communicate with other portions of processor 500 through cache hierarchy 503. In a further embodiment, front end 570 may fetch instructions from portions of processor 500 and prepare the instructions to be used later in the processor pipeline as they are passed to out-of-order execution engine 580.
Out-of-order execution engine 580 may be implemented in any suitable manner, such as fully or in part by out-of-order execution engine 203 as described above. Out-of-order execution engine 580 may prepare instructions received from front end 570 for execution. Out-of-order execution engine 580 may include an allocate module 582. In one embodiment, allocate module 582 may allocate resources of processor 500 or other resources, such as registers or buffers, to execute a given instruction. Allocate module 582 may make allocations in schedulers, such as a memory scheduler, fast scheduler, or floating point scheduler. Such schedulers may be represented in
Cache hierarchy 503 may be implemented in any suitable manner. For example, cache hierarchy 503 may include one or more lower or mid-level caches, such as caches 572, 574. In one embodiment, cache hierarchy 503 may include an LLC 595 communicatively coupled to caches 572, 574. In another embodiment, LLC 595 may be implemented in a module 590 accessible to all processing entities of processor 500. In a further embodiment, module 590 may be implemented in an uncore module of processors from Intel, Inc. Module 590 may include portions or subsystems of processor 500 necessary for the execution of core 502 but might not be implemented within core 502. Besides LLC 595, Module 590 may include, for example, hardware interfaces, memory coherency coordinators, interprocessor interconnects, instruction pipelines, or memory controllers. Access to RAM 599 available to processor 500 may be made through module 590 and, more specifically, LLC 595. Furthermore, other instances of core 502 may similarly access module 590. Coordination of the instances of core 502 may be facilitated in part through module 590.
Each processor 610,615 may be some version of processor 500. However, it should be noted that integrated graphics logic and integrated memory control units might not exist in processors 610,615.
GMCH 620 may be a chipset, or a portion of a chipset. GMCH 620 may communicate with processors 610, 615 and control interaction between processors 610, 615 and memory 640. GMCH 620 may also act as an accelerated bus interface between the processors 610, 615 and other elements of system 600. In one embodiment, GMCH 620 communicates with processors 610, 615 via a multi-drop bus, such as a frontside bus (FSB) 695.
Furthermore, GMCH 620 may be coupled to a display 645 (such as a flat panel display). In one embodiment, GMCH 620 may include an integrated graphics accelerator. GMCH 620 may be further coupled to an input/output (I/O) controller hub (ICH) 650, which may be used to couple various peripheral devices to system 600. External graphics device 660 may include a discrete graphics device coupled to ICH 650 along with another peripheral device 670.
In other embodiments, additional or different processors may also be present in system 600. For example, additional processors 610, 615 may include additional processors that may be the same as processor 610, additional processors that may be heterogeneous or asymmetric to processor 610, accelerators (such as, e.g., graphics accelerators or digital signal processing (DSP) units), field programmable gate arrays, or any other processor. There may be a variety of differences between the physical resources 610, 615 in terms of a spectrum of metrics of merit including architectural, micro-architectural, thermal, power consumption characteristics, and the like. These differences may effectively manifest themselves as asymmetry and heterogeneity amongst processors 610, 615. For at least one embodiment, various processors 610, 615 may reside in the same die package.
While
Processors 770 and 780 are shown including integrated memory controller units 772 and 782, respectively. Processor 770 may also include as part of its bus controller units point-to-point (P-P) interfaces 776 and 778; similarly, second processor 780 may include P-P interfaces 786 and 788. Processors 770, 780 may exchange information via a point-to-point (P-P) interface 750 using P-P interface circuits 778, 788. As shown in
Processors 770, 780 may each exchange information with a chipset 790 via individual P-P interfaces 752, 754 using point to point interface circuits 776, 794, 786, 798. In one embodiment, chipset 790 may also exchange information with a high-performance graphics circuit 738 via a high-performance graphics interface 739.
A shared cache (not shown) may be included in either processor or outside of both processors, yet connected with the processors via P-P interconnect, such that either or both processors' local cache information may be stored in the shared cache if a processor is placed into a low power mode.
Chipset 790 may be coupled to a first bus 716 via an interface 796. In one embodiment, first bus 716 may be a Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) bus, or a bus such as a PCI Express bus or another third generation I/O interconnect bus, although the scope of the present disclosure is not so limited.
As shown in
In some embodiments, instructions that benefit from highly parallel, throughput processors may be performed by the GPU, while instructions that benefit from the performance of processors that benefit from deeply pipelined architectures may be performed by the CPU. For example, graphics, scientific applications, financial applications and other parallel workloads may benefit from the performance of the GPU and be executed accordingly, whereas more sequential applications, such as operating system kernel or application code may be better suited for the CPU.
In
One or more aspects of at least one embodiment may be implemented by representative data stored on a machine-readable medium which represents various logic within the processor, which when read by a machine causes the machine to fabricate logic to perform the techniques described herein. Such representations, known as “IP cores” may be stored on a tangible, machine-readable medium (“tape”) and supplied to various customers or manufacturing facilities to load into the fabrication machines that actually make the logic or processor. For example, IP cores, such as the Cortex™ family of processors developed by ARM Holdings, Ltd. and Loongson IP cores developed the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences may be licensed or sold to various customers or licensees, such as Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Apple, or Samsung and implemented in processors produced by these customers or licensees.
In some embodiments, one or more instructions may correspond to a first type or architecture (e.g., x86) and be translated or emulated on a processor of a different type or architecture (e.g., ARM). An instruction, according to one embodiment, may therefore be performed on any processor or processor type, including ARM, x86, MIPS, a GPU, or other processor type or architecture.
For example, instruction set architecture 1400 may include processing entities such as one or more cores 1406, 1407 and a graphics processing unit 1415. Cores 1406, 1407 may be communicatively coupled to the rest of instruction set architecture 1400 through any suitable mechanism, such as through a bus or cache. In one embodiment, cores 1406, 1407 may be communicatively coupled through an L2 cache control 1408, which may include a bus interface unit 1409 and an L2 cache 1411. Cores 1406, 1407 and graphics processing unit 1415 may be communicatively coupled to each other and to the remainder of instruction set architecture 1400 through interconnect 1410. In one embodiment, graphics processing unit 1415 may use a video code 1420 defining the manner in which particular video signals will be encoded and decoded for output.
Instruction set architecture 1400 may also include any number or kind of interfaces, controllers, or other mechanisms for interfacing or communicating with other portions of an electronic device or system. Such mechanisms may facilitate interaction with, for example, peripherals, communications devices, other processors, or memory. In the example of
Instruction architecture 1500 may include a memory system 1540 communicatively coupled to one or more execution entities 1565. Furthermore, instruction architecture 1500 may include a caching and bus interface unit such as unit 1510 communicatively coupled to execution entities 1565 and memory system 1540. In one embodiment, loading of instructions into execution entities 1565 may be performed by one or more stages of execution. Such stages may include, for example, instruction prefetch stage 1530, dual instruction decode stage 1550, register rename stage 1555, issue stage 1560, and writeback stage 1570.
In one embodiment, memory system 1540 may include an executed instruction pointer 1580. Executed instruction pointer 1580 may store a value identifying the oldest, undispatched instruction within a batch of instructions. The oldest instruction may correspond to the lowest Program Order (PO) value. A PO may include a unique number of an instruction. Such an instruction may be a single instruction within a thread represented by multiple strands. A PO may be used in ordering instructions to ensure correct execution semantics of code. A PO may be reconstructed by mechanisms such as evaluating increments to PO encoded in the instruction rather than an absolute value. Such a reconstructed PO may be known as an “RPO.” Although a PO may be referenced herein, such a PO may be used interchangeably with an RPO. A strand may include a sequence of instructions that are data dependent upon each other. The strand may be arranged by a binary translator at compilation time. Hardware executing a strand may execute the instructions of a given strand in order according to the PO of the various instructions. A thread may include multiple strands such that instructions of different strands may depend upon each other. A PO of a given strand may be the PO of the oldest instruction in the strand which has not yet been dispatched to execution from an issue stage. Accordingly, given a thread of multiple strands, each strand including instructions ordered by PO, executed instruction pointer 1580 may store the oldest—illustrated by the lowest number—PO in the thread.
In another embodiment, memory system 1540 may include a retirement pointer 1582. Retirement pointer 1582 may store a value identifying the PO of the last retired instruction. Retirement pointer 1582 may be set by, for example, retirement unit 454. If no instructions have yet been retired, retirement pointer 1582 may include a null value.
Execution entities 1565 may include any suitable number and kind of mechanisms by which a processor may execute instructions. In the example of
Unit 1510 may be implemented in any suitable manner. In one embodiment, unit 1510 may perform cache control. In such an embodiment, unit 1510 may thus include a cache 1525. Cache 1525 may be implemented, in a further embodiment, as an L2 unified cache with any suitable size, such as zero, 128 k, 256 k, 512 k, 1M, or 2M bytes of memory. In another, further embodiment, cache 1525 may be implemented in error-correcting code memory. In another embodiment, unit 1510 may perform bus interfacing to other portions of a processor or electronic device. In such an embodiment, unit 1510 may thus include a bus interface unit 1520 for communicating over an interconnect, intraprocessor bus, interprocessor bus, or other communication bus, port, or line. Bus interface unit 1520 may provide interfacing in order to perform, for example, generation of the memory and input/output addresses for the transfer of data between execution entities 1565 and the portions of a system external to instruction architecture 1500.
To further facilitate its functions, bus interface unit 1520 may include an interrupt control and distribution unit 1511 for generating interrupts and other communications to other portions of a processor or electronic device. In one embodiment, bus interface unit 1520 may include a snoop control unit 1512 that handles cache access and coherency for multiple processing cores. In a further embodiment, to provide such functionality, snoop control unit 1512 may include a cache-to-cache transfer unit that handles information exchanges between different caches. In another, further embodiment, snoop control unit 1512 may include one or more snoop filters 1514 that monitors the coherency of other caches (not shown) so that a cache controller, such as unit 1510, does not have to perform such monitoring directly. Unit 1510 may include any suitable number of timers 1515 for synchronizing the actions of instruction architecture 1500. Also, unit 1510 may include an AC port 1516.
Memory system 1540 may include any suitable number and kind of mechanisms for storing information for the processing needs of instruction architecture 1500. In one embodiment, memory system 1540 may include a load store unit 1546 for storing information such as buffers written to or read back from memory or registers. In another embodiment, memory system 1540 may include a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) 1545 that provides look-up of address values between physical and virtual addresses. In yet another embodiment, memory system 1540 may include a memory management unit (MMU) 1544 for facilitating access to virtual memory. In still yet another embodiment, memory system 1540 may include a prefetcher 1543 for requesting instructions from memory before such instructions are actually needed to be executed, in order to reduce latency.
The operation of instruction architecture 1500 to execute an instruction may be performed through different stages. For example, using unit 1510 instruction prefetch stage 1530 may access an instruction through prefetcher 1543. Instructions retrieved may be stored in instruction cache 1532. Prefetch stage 1530 may enable an option 1531 for fast-loop mode, wherein a series of instructions forming a loop that is small enough to fit within a given cache are executed. In one embodiment, such an execution may be performed without needing to access additional instructions from, for example, instruction cache 1532. Determination of what instructions to prefetch may be made by, for example, branch prediction unit 1535, which may access indications of execution in global history 1536, indications of target addresses 1537, or contents of a return stack 1538 to determine which of branches 1557 of code will be executed next. Such branches may be possibly prefetched as a result. Branches 1557 may be produced through other stages of operation as described below. Instruction prefetch stage 1530 may provide instructions as well as any predictions about future instructions to dual instruction decode stage 1550.
Dual instruction decode stage 1550 may translate a received instruction into microcode-based instructions that may be executed. Dual instruction decode stage 1550 may simultaneously decode two instructions per clock cycle. Furthermore, dual instruction decode stage 1550 may pass its results to register rename stage 1555. In addition, dual instruction decode stage 1550 may determine any resulting branches from its decoding and eventual execution of the microcode. Such results may be input into branches 1557.
Register rename stage 1555 may translate references to virtual registers or other resources into references to physical registers or resources. Register rename stage 1555 may include indications of such mapping in a register pool 1556. Register rename stage 1555 may alter the instructions as received and send the result to issue stage 1560.
Issue stage 1560 may issue or dispatch commands to execution entities 1565. Such issuance may be performed in an out-of-order fashion. In one embodiment, multiple instructions may be held at issue stage 1560 before being executed. Issue stage 1560 may include an instruction queue 1561 for holding such multiple commands. Instructions may be issued by issue stage 1560 to a particular processing entity 1565 based upon any acceptable criteria, such as availability or suitability of resources for execution of a given instruction. In one embodiment, issue stage 1560 may reorder the instructions within instruction queue 1561 such that the first instructions received might not be the first instructions executed. Based upon the ordering of instruction queue 1561, additional branching information may be provided to branches 1557. Issue stage 1560 may pass instructions to executing entities 1565 for execution.
Upon execution, writeback stage 1570 may write data into registers, queues, or other structures of instruction set architecture 1500 to communicate the completion of a given command. Depending upon the order of instructions arranged in issue stage 1560, the operation of writeback stage 1570 may enable additional instructions to be executed. Performance of instruction set architecture 1500 may be monitored or debugged by trace unit 1575.
Execution pipeline 1600 may include any suitable combination of steps or operations. In 1605, predictions of the branch that is to be executed next may be made. In one embodiment, such predictions may be based upon previous executions of instructions and the results thereof. In 1610, instructions corresponding to the predicted branch of execution may be loaded into an instruction cache. In 1615, one or more such instructions in the instruction cache may be fetched for execution. In 1620, the instructions that have been fetched may be decoded into microcode or more specific machine language. In one embodiment, multiple instructions may be simultaneously decoded. In 1625, references to registers or other resources within the decoded instructions may be reassigned. For example, references to virtual registers may be replaced with references to corresponding physical registers. In 1630, the instructions may be dispatched to queues for execution. In 1640, the instructions may be executed. Such execution may be performed in any suitable manner. In 1650, the instructions may be issued to a suitable execution entity. The manner in which the instruction is executed may depend upon the specific entity executing the instruction. For example, at 1655, an ALU may perform arithmetic functions. The ALU may utilize a single clock cycle for its operation, as well as two shifters. In one embodiment, two ALUs may be employed, and thus two instructions may be executed at 1655. At 1660, a determination of a resulting branch may be made. A program counter may be used to designate the destination to which the branch will be made. 1660 may be executed within a single clock cycle. At 1665, floating point arithmetic may be performed by one or more FPUs. The floating point operation may require multiple clock cycles to execute, such as two to ten cycles. At 1670, multiplication and division operations may be performed. Such operations may be performed in four clock cycles. At 1675, loading and storing operations to registers or other portions of pipeline 1600 may be performed. The operations may include loading and storing addresses. Such operations may be performed in four clock cycles. At 1680, write-back operations may be performed as required by the resulting operations of 1655-1675.
Electronic device 1700 may include processor 1710 communicatively coupled to any suitable number or kind of components, peripherals, modules, or devices. Such coupling may be accomplished by any suitable kind of bus or interface, such as I2C bus, system management bus (SMBus), low pin count (LPC) bus, SPI, high definition audio (HDA) bus, Serial Advance Technology Attachment (SATA) bus, USB bus (versions 1, 2, 3), or Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART) bus.
Such components may include, for example, a display 1724, a touch screen 1725, a touch pad 1730, a near field communications (NFC) unit 1745, a sensor hub 1740, a thermal sensor 1746, an express chipset (EC) 1735, a trusted platform module (TPM) 1738, BIOS/firmware/flash memory 1722, a digital signal processor 1760, a drive 1720 such as a solid state disk (SSD) or a hard disk drive (HDD), a wireless local area network (WLAN) unit 1750, a Bluetooth unit 1752, a wireless wide area network (WWAN) unit 1756, a global positioning system (GPS) 1775, a camera 1754 such as a USB 3.0 camera, or a low power double data rate (LPDDR) memory unit 1715 implemented in, for example, the LPDDR3 standard. These components may each be implemented in any suitable manner.
Furthermore, in various embodiments other components may be communicatively coupled to processor 1710 through the components discussed above. For example, an accelerometer 1741, ambient light sensor (ALS) 1742, compass 1743, and gyroscope 1744 may be communicatively coupled to sensor hub 1740. A thermal sensor 1739, fan 1737, keyboard 1736, and touch pad 1730 may be communicatively coupled to EC 1735. Speakers 1763, headphones 1764, and a microphone 1765 may be communicatively coupled to an audio unit 1762, which may in turn be communicatively coupled to DSP 1760. Audio unit 1762 may include, for example, an audio codec and a class D amplifier. A SIM card 1757 may be communicatively coupled to WWAN unit 1756. Components such as WLAN unit 1750 and Bluetooth unit 1752, as well as WWAN unit 1756 may be implemented in a next generation form factor (NGFF).
Embodiments of the present disclosure involve instructions and processing logic for executing one or more vector operations that target vector registers, at least some of which operate to access memory locations using index values retrieved from an array of indices.
A gather operation may, in general, perform a sequence of memory accesses (read operations) to addresses that are computed according to the contents of a base address register, an index register, and/or a scaling factor that are specified by (or encoded in) the instruction. For example, a cryptography, graph traversal, sorting, or sparse matrix application may include one or more instructions to load the index register with a sequence of index values and one or more other instructions to perform gathering the data elements that are indirectly addressed using those index values. The Load-Indices-and-Gather instructions described herein may load the indices needed for a gather operation and also perform the gather operation. This may include, for each data element to be gathered from a random location or a location in sparse memory, retrieving an index value from a particular position in an array of indices in memory, computing the address of the data element in the memory, gathering (retrieving) the data element using the computed address, and storing the gathered data element in a destination vector register. The address of the data element may be computed based on a base address specified for the instruction and the index value retrieved from the array of indices whose address is specified for the instruction. In embodiments of the present disclosure, these Load-Indices-and-Gather instructions may be used to gather data elements into a destination vector in applications in which the data elements have been stored in random order in memory. For example, they may be stored as elements of a sparse array.
In embodiments of the present disclosure, encodings of the extended vector instructions may include a scale-index-base (SIB) type memory addressing operand that indirectly identifies multiple indexed destination locations in memory. In one embodiment, an SIB type memory operand may include an encoding identifying a base address register. The contents of the base address register may represent a base address in memory from which the addresses of the particular locations in memory are calculated. For example, the base address may be the address of the first location in a block of locations in which data elements to be gathered are stored. In one embodiment, an SIB type memory operand may include an encoding identifying an array of indices in memory. Each element of the array may specify an index or offset value usable to compute, from the base address, an address of a respective location within a block of locations in which data elements to be gathered are stored. In one embodiment, an SIB type memory operand may include an encoding specifying a scaling factor to be applied to each index value when computing a respective destination address. For example, if a scaling factor value of four is encoded in the SIB type memory operand, each index value obtained from an element of the array of indices may be multiplied by four and then added to the base address to compute an address of a data element to be gathered.
In one embodiment, an SIB type memory operand of the form vm32{x, y, z} may identify a vector array of memory operands specified using SIB type memory addressing. In this example, the array of memory addresses are specified using a common base register, a constant scaling factor, and a vector index register containing individual elements, each of which is a 32-bit index value. The vector index register may be an XMM register (vm32x), a YMM register (vm32y), or a ZMM register (vm32z). In another embodiment, an SIB type memory operand of the form vm64{x, y, z} may identify a vector array of memory operands specified using SIB type memory addressing. In this example, the array of memory addresses are specified using a common base register, a constant scaling factor, and a vector index register containing individual elements, each of which is a 64-bit index value. The vector index register may be an XMM register (vm64x), a YMM register (vm64y) or a ZMM register (vm64z).
System 1800 may include a processor, SoC, integrated circuit, or other mechanism. For example, system 1800 may include processor 1804. Although processor 1804 is shown and described as an example in
Instructions to be executed on processor 1804 may be included in instruction stream 1802. Instruction stream 1802 may be generated by, for example, a compiler, just-in-time interpreter, or other suitable mechanism (which might or might not be included in system 1800), or may be designated by a drafter of code resulting in instruction stream 1802. For example, a compiler may take application code and generate executable code in the form of instruction stream 1802. Instructions may be received by processor 1804 from instruction stream 1802. Instruction stream 1802 may be loaded to processor 1804 in any suitable manner. For example, instructions to be executed by processor 1804 may be loaded from storage, from other machines, or from other memory, such as memory system 1830. The instructions may arrive and be available in resident memory, such as RAM, wherein instructions are fetched from storage to be executed by processor 1804. The instructions may be fetched from resident memory by, for example, a prefetcher or fetch unit (such as instruction fetch unit 1808).
In one embodiment, instruction stream 1802 may include an instruction to perform a vector operation to load indices from an array of indices and gather elements from random locations in memory or locations in sparse memory based on those indices. For example, in one embodiment, instruction stream 1802 may include one or more “LoadIndicesAndGather” type instructions to load, one at a time as needed, index values to be used in computing the address in memory of a particular data element to be gathered. The address may be computed as the sum of a base address that is specified for the instruction and the index value retrieved from an array of indices that is identified for the instruction, with or without scaling. The gathered data elements may be stored in contiguous locations in a destination vector register that is specified for the instruction. Note that instruction stream 1802 may include instructions other than those that perform vector operations.
Processor 1804 may include a front end 1806, which may include an instruction fetch pipeline stage (such as instruction fetch unit 1808) and a decode pipeline stage (such as decide unit 1810). Front end 1806 may receive and decode instructions from instruction stream 1802 using decode unit 1810. The decoded instructions may be dispatched, allocated, and scheduled for execution by an allocation stage of a pipeline (such as allocator 1814) and allocated to specific execution units 1816 for execution. One or more specific instructions to be executed by processor 1804 may be included in a library defined for execution by processor 1804. In another embodiment, specific instructions may be targeted by particular portions of processor 1804. For example, processor 1804 may recognize an attempt in instruction stream 1802 to execute a vector operation in software and may issue the instruction to a particular one of execution units 1816.
During execution, access to data or additional instructions (including data or instructions resident in memory system 1830) may be made through memory subsystem 1820. Moreover, results from execution may be stored in memory subsystem 1820 and may subsequently be flushed to memory system 1830. Memory subsystem 1820 may include, for example, memory, RAM, or a cache hierarchy, which may include one or more Level 1 (L1) caches 1822 or Level 2 (L2) caches 1824, some of which may be shared by multiple cores 1812 or processors 1804. After execution by execution units 1816, instructions may be retired by a writeback stage or retirement stage in retirement unit 1818. Various portions of such execution pipelining may be performed by one or more cores 1812.
An execution unit 1816 that executes vector instructions may be implemented in any suitable manner. In one embodiment, an execution unit 1816 may include or may be communicatively coupled to memory elements to store information necessary to perform one or more vector operations. In one embodiment, an execution unit 1816 may include circuitry to perform vector operations to load indices from an array of indices and gather elements from random locations or locations in sparse memory based on those indices. For example, an execution unit 1816 may include circuitry to implement one or more forms of a vector LoadIndicesAndGather type instruction. Example implementations of these instructions are described in more detail below.
In embodiments of the present disclosure, the instruction set architecture of processor 1804 may implement one or more extended vector instructions that are defined as Intel® Advanced Vector Extensions 512 (Intel® AVX-512) instructions. Processor 1804 may recognize, either implicitly or through decoding and execution of specific instructions, that one of these extended vector operations is to be performed. In such cases, the extended vector operation may be directed to a particular one of the execution units 1816 for execution of the instruction. In one embodiment, the instruction set architecture may include support for 512-bit SIMD operations. For example, the instruction set architecture implemented by an execution unit 1816 may include 32 vector registers, each of which is 512 bits wide, and support for vectors that are up to 512 bits wide. The instruction set architecture implemented by an execution unit 1816 may include eight dedicated mask registers for conditional execution and efficient merging of destination operands. At least some extended vector instructions may include support for broadcasting. At least some extended vector instructions may include support for embedded masking to enable predication.
At least some extended vector instructions may apply the same operation to each element of a vector stored in a vector register at the same time. Other extended vector instructions may apply the same operation to corresponding elements in multiple source vector registers. For example, the same operation may be applied to each of the individual data elements of a packed data item stored in a vector register by an extended vector instruction. In another example, an extended vector instruction may specify a single vector operation to be performed on the respective data elements of two source vector operands to generate a destination vector operand.
In embodiments of the present disclosure, at least some extended vector instructions may be executed by a SIMD coprocessor within a processor core. For example, one or more of execution units 1816 within a core 1812 may implement the functionality of a SIMD coprocessor. The SIMD coprocessor may be implemented fully or in part by the elements described in
As illustrated in
In one embodiment, a LoadIndicesAndGather type instruction may include a REG parameter that identifies a destination vector register for the instruction.
In one embodiment, a LoadIndicesAndGather type instruction may include two memory address parameters, one of which identifies a base address for a group of data element locations in memory and the other of which identifies an array of indices in memory. In one embodiment, one or both of these memory address parameters may be encoded in a scale-index-base (SIB) type memory addressing operand. In another embodiment, one or both of these memory address parameters may be a pointer.
In one embodiment, a LoadIndicesAndGather type instruction may include a {kn} parameter that identifies a particular mask register, if masking is to be applied. If masking is to be applied, the LoadIndicesAndGather type instruction may include a {z} parameter that specifies a masking type. In one embodiment, if the {z} parameter is included for the instruction, this may indicate that zero-masking is to be applied when writing the results of the instruction to its destination vector register. If the {z} parameter is not included for the instruction, this may indicate that merging-masking is to be applied when writing the results of the instruction to its destination vector register. Examples of the use of zero-masking and merging-masking are described in more detail below.
One or more of the parameters of the LoadIndicesAndGather type instructions shown in
In one embodiment, main processor 1920 may include a decoder 1922 to recognize instructions of extended SIMD instruction set 1916 for execution by SIMD coprocessor 1910. In other embodiments, SIMD coprocessor 1910 may include at least part of decoder (not shown) to decode instructions of extended SIMD instruction set 1916. Processor core 1900 may also include additional circuitry (not shown) which may be unnecessary to the understanding of embodiments of the present disclosure.
In embodiments of the present disclosure, main processor 1920 may execute a stream of data processing instructions that control data processing operations of a general type, including interactions with cache(s) 1924 and/or register file 1926. Embedded within the stream of data processing instructions may be SIMD coprocessor instructions of extended SIMD instruction set 1916. Decoder 1922 of main processor 1920 may recognize these SIMD coprocessor instructions as being of a type that should be executed by an attached SIMD coprocessor 1910. Accordingly, main processor 1920 may issue these SIMD coprocessor instructions (or control signals representing SIMD coprocessor instructions) on the coprocessor bus 1915. From coprocessor bus 1915, these instructions may be received by any attached SIMD coprocessor. In the example embodiment illustrated in
In one embodiment, main processor 1920 and SIMD coprocessor 1920 may be integrated into a single processor core 1900 that includes an execution unit, a set of register files, and a decoder to recognize instructions of extended SIMD instruction set 1916.
The example implementations depicted in
In one embodiment, extended vector instructions in extended SIMD instruction set 1916 may operate on any of the registers in extended vector register file 1914, including registers ZMM0-ZMM31, registers YMM0-YMM15, and registers XMM0-XMM7. In another embodiment, legacy SIMD instructions implemented prior to the development of the Intel® AVX-512 instruction set architecture may operate on a subset of the YMM or XMM registers in extended vector register file 1914. For example, access by some legacy SIMD instructions may be limited to registers YMM0-YMM15 or to registers XMM0-XMM7, in some embodiments.
In embodiments of the present disclosure, the instruction set architecture may support extended vector instructions that access up to four instruction operands. For example, in at least some embodiments, the extended vector instructions may access any of 32 extended vector registers ZMM0-ZMM31 shown in
In embodiments of the present disclosure, encodings of the extended vector instructions may include an opcode specifying a particular vector operation to be performed. Encodings of the extended vector instructions may include an encoding identifying any of eight dedicated mask registers, k0-k7. Each bit of the identified mask register may govern the behavior of a vector operation as it is applied to a respective source vector element or destination vector element. For example, in one embodiment, seven of these mask registers (k1-k7) may be used to conditionally govern the per-data-element computational operation of an extended vector instruction. In this example, the operation is not performed for a given vector element if the corresponding mask bit is not set. In another embodiment, mask registers k1-k7 may be used to conditionally govern the per-element updates to the destination operand of an extended vector instruction. In this example, a given destination element is not updated with the result of the operation if the corresponding mask bit is not set.
In one embodiment, encodings of the extended vector instructions may include an encoding specifying the type of masking to be applied to the destination (result) vector of an extended vector instruction. For example, this encoding may specify whether merging-masking or zero-masking is applied to the execution of a vector operation. If this encoding specifies merging-masking, the value of any destination vector element whose corresponding bit in the mask register is not set may be preserved in the destination vector. If this encoding specifies zero-masking, the value of any destination vector element whose corresponding bit in the mask register is not set may be replaced with a value of zero in the destination vector. In one example embodiment, mask register k0 is not used as a predicate operand for a vector operation. In this example, the encoding value that would otherwise select mask k0 may instead select an implicit mask value of all ones, thereby effectively disabling masking. In this example, mask register k0 may be used for any instruction that takes one or more mask registers as a source or destination operand.
In one embodiment, encodings of the extended vector instructions may include an encoding specifying the size of the data elements that are packed into a source vector register or that are to be packed into a destination vector register. For example, the encoding may specify that each data element is a byte, word, doubleword, or quadword, etc. In another embodiment, encodings of the extended vector instructions may include an encoding specifying the data type of the data elements that are packed into a source vector register or that are to be packed into a destination vector register. For example, the encoding may specify that the data represents single or double precision integers, or any of multiple supported floating point data types.
In one embodiment, encodings of the extended vector instructions may include an encoding specifying a memory address or memory addressing mode with which to access a source or destination operand. In another embodiment, encodings of the extended vector instructions may include an encoding specifying a scalar integer or a scalar floating point number that is an operand of the instruction. While specific extended vector instructions and their encodings are described herein, these are merely examples of the extended vector instructions that may be implemented in embodiments of the present disclosure. In other embodiments, more fewer, or different extended vector instructions may be implemented in the instruction set architecture and their encodings may include more, less, or different information to control their execution.
In one embodiment, the use of a LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may improve the performance of cryptography, graph traversal, sorting, and sparse matrix applications (among others) that use indirect read accesses to memory by way of indices stored in arrays, when compared to other sequences of instructions to perform a gather. In one embodiment, rather than specifying a set of addresses from which to load a vector of indices, those addresses may instead be provided as an array of indices to a LoadIndicesAndGather instruction that will both load each element of the array and then use it as an index for a gather operation. The vector of indices to be used in the gather operation may be stored in contiguous locations in memory. For example, in one embodiment, starting in the first position in the array, there may be four bytes that contain the first index value, followed by four bytes that contain the second index value, and so on. In one embodiment, the starting address of the array of indices (in memory) may be provided to the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction and the index values may be stored contiguously in the memory beginning at that address. In one embodiment, the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may load 64 bytes starting from that position and use them (four at a time) to perform the gather.
As described in more detail below, in one embodiment, the semantics of the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may be as follows:
In this example, the gather operation is to retrieve 32-bit doubleword elements, the destination vector register is specified as ZMMn, the starting address of the array of indices in memory is Addr A, the starting address (base address) of the potential gather element locations in memory is Addr B, and the mask specified for the instruction is mask register kn. The operation of this instruction may be illustrated by the following example pseudo code. In this example, VLEN (or vector length) may represent the length of in index vector, that is, the number of index values stored in the array of indices for the gather operation.
In one embodiment, merging-masking may be optional for the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction. In another embodiment, zero-masking may be optional for the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction. In one embodiment, the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may support multiple possible values of VLEN, such as 8, 16, 32, or 64. In one embodiment, the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may support multiple possible sizes of elements in the array of indices B[i], such as 32-bit, or 64-bit values, each of which may represent one or more index values. In one embodiment, the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may support multiple possible types and sizes of data elements in memory location A[i], including single- or double-precision floating point, 64-bit integer, and others. In one embodiment, since the index load and gather are combined into one instruction, if a hardware prefetch unit recognizes that the indices from array B can be prefetched, it may automatically prefetch them. In one embodiment, the prefetch unit may also automatically prefetch the values from array A indirectly accessed through B.
In embodiments of the present disclosure, the instructions for performing extended vector operations that are implemented by a processor core (such as core 1812 in system 1800) or by a SIMD coprocessor (such as SIMD coprocessor 1910) may include an instruction to perform a vector operation to load indices from an array of indices and gather elements from random locations or locations in sparse memory based on those indices. For example, these instructions may include one or more “LoadIndicesAndGather” instructions. In embodiments of the present disclosure, these LoadIndicesAndGather instructions may be used to load, one at a time as needed, each of the index values to be used in computing the address in memory of a particular data element to be gathered. The address may be computed as the sum of a base address that is specified for the instruction and the index value retrieved from an array of indices that is identified for the instruction, with or without scaling. The gathered data elements may be stored in contiguous locations in a destination vector register that is specified for the instruction.
In one embodiment, a call of a LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may specify a scaling factor to be applied to each index value when computing a respective address of a data element to be gathered by the instruction. In one embodiment, the scaling factor may be encoded in the SIB type memory addressing operand. In one embodiment, the scaling factor may be one, two, four or eight. The specified scaling factor may be dependent on the size of the individual data elements to be gathered by the instruction. In one embodiment, a call of a LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may specify the size of the data elements to be gathered by the instruction. For example, a size parameter may indicate that the data elements are bytes, words, doublewords, or quadwords. In another example, a size parameter may indicate that the data elements represent signed or unsigned floating point values. In another embodiment, a call of a LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may specify the maximum number of data elements to be gathered by the instruction. In one embodiment, a call of a LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may specify a mask register to be applied to the individual operations of the instruction or when writing the result of the operation to the destination vector register. For example, a mask register may include a respective bit for each potentially gathered data element corresponding to the position in the array of indices containing the index value for that data element. In this example, if the respective bit for a given data element is set, its index value may be retrieved, its address may be computed, and the given data element may be retrieved and stored in the destination vector register. If the respective bit for a given data element is not set, these operations may be elided for the given data element. In one embodiment, a call of a LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may specify the type of masking to be applied to the result, such as merging-masking or zero-masking, if masking is to be applied. For example, if merging-masking is applied and the mask bit for a given data element is not set, the value stored in the location within the destination vector register to which the given data element (had it been gathered) would have otherwise been stored prior to the execution of the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may be preserved. In another example, if zero-masking is applied and the mask bit for a given data element is not set, a NULL value, such as all zeros, may be written to the location in the destination vector register to which the given data element (had it been gathered) would have otherwise been stored. In other embodiments, more, fewer, or different parameters may be referenced in a call of a LoadIndicesAndGather instruction.
In the example embodiment illustrated in
In this example, a parameter for the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may identify extended vector register ZMMn (2101) within an extended vector register file 1914 as the destination vector register for the instruction. In this example, data elements that may potentially be gathered are stored in various ones of data element locations 2103 in memory system 1803. The data elements stored in data element locations 2103 may all be the same size, and the size may be specified by a parameter of the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction. The data elements that may potentially be gathered may be stored in any random order within data element locations 2103. In this example, the first possible location within data element locations 2103 from which data elements may be gathered is shown in
Execution of the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction by SIMD execution unit 1912 may include, at (2) determining whether a mask bit corresponding to the next potential gather is false, and if so, skipping the next potential load-index-and-gather. For example, if bit 0 is false, the SIMD execution unit may refrain from performing some or all of steps (3) through (7) to gather the data element whose address may be computed using the first index value 2106. However, if the mask bit corresponding to the next potential gather is true, the next potential load-index-and-gather may be performed. For example, if bit 1 is true, or if masking is not applied to the instruction, the SIMD execution unit may perform all of steps (3) through (7) to gather the data element whose address is computed using the second index value 2107 and the address of base address location 2104.
For a potential load-index-and-gather whose corresponding mask bit is true, or when no masking is applied, at (3) the next index value may be retrieved. For example, during the first potential load-index-and-gather, the first index value 2106 may be retrieved, during the second potential load-index-and-gather, the second index value 2106 may be retrieved, and so on. At (4) the address for the next gather may be computed based on the retrieved index value and the address of the base address location 2104. For example, the address for the next gather may be computed as the sum of the base address and the retrieved index value, with or without scaling. At (5) the next gather location may be accessed in the memory using the computed address, and at (6) the data element may be retrieved from that gather location. At (7) the gathered data element may be stored to destination vector register ZMMn (2101) in extended vector register file 1914.
In one embodiment, execution of the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may include repeating any or all of steps of the operation illustrated in
In one embodiment, as data elements are gathered from particular locations within data element locations 2103, some or all of them may be assembled into a destination vector, along with any NULL values, prior to being written to destination vector register ZMMn (2101). In another embodiment, each gathered data element or NULL value may be written out to destination vector register ZMMn (2101) as it is obtained or its value is determined. In this example, mask register 2102 is illustrated in
In one embodiment, the extended SIMD instruction set architecture may implement multiple versions or forms of a vector operation to load indices from an array of indices and gather elements from random locations or locations in sparse memory based on those indices. These instruction forms may include, for example, those shown below:
In the example forms of the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction shown above, the REG parameter may identify an extended vector register that serves as the destination vector register for the instruction. In these examples, the first PTR value or memory address operand may identify the base address location in memory. The second PTR value or memory address operand may identify the array of indices in memory. In these example forms of the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction, the “size” modifier may specify the size and/or type of the data elements to be gathered from locations in memory and stored in the destination vector register. In one embodiment, the specified size/type may be one of {B/W/D/Q/PS/PD}. In these examples, the optional instruction parameter “kn” may identify a particular one of multiple mask registers. This parameter may be specified when masking is to be applied to the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction. In embodiments in which masking is to be applied (e.g., if a mask register is specified for the instruction), the optional instruction parameter “z” may indicate whether or not zeroing-masking should be applied. In one embodiment, zero-masking may be applied if this optional parameter is set, and merging-masking may be applied if this optional parameter is not set or if this optional parameter is omitted. In other embodiments (not shown), a LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may include a parameter indicating the maximum number of data elements to be gathered. In another embodiment, the maximum number of data elements to be gathered may be determined by the SIMD execution unit based on the number of index values stored in the array of index values. In yet another embodiment, the maximum number of data elements to be gathered may be determined by the SIMD execution unit based on the capacity of the destination vector register.
In the example illustrated in
At 2305, in one embodiment, an instruction to perform loading indices from an array of indices and gathering elements from random locations or locations in sparse memory based on those indices may be received and decoded. For example, a LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may be received and decoded. At 2310, the instruction and one or more parameters of the instruction may be directed to a SIMD execution unit for execution. In some embodiments, the instruction parameters may include an identifier of or pointer to an array of indices in memory, an identifier of or pointer to a base address for a group of data element locations in memory, including data elements to be gathered, an identifier of a destination register (which may be an extended vector register), an indication of the size of the data elements to be gathered, an indication of the maximum number of data elements to be gathered, a parameter identifying a particular mask register, or a parameter specifying a masking type.
At 2315, in one embodiment, processing of the first potential load-index-and-gather may begin. For example, a first iteration of the steps shown in 2320-2355, corresponding to the first position (location i=0) in the array of indices in memory identified for the instruction, may begin. If (at 2320) it is determined that a mask bit corresponding to the first position in the array of indices (location 0) is not set, then the steps shown in 2330-2355 may be elided for this iteration. In this case, at 2325, the value that was stored in location i (location 0) in the destination register prior to the execution of the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may be preserved.
If (at 2320) it is determined that the mask bit corresponding to the first position in the array of indices is set or that no masking has been specified for the LoadIndicesAndGather operation, then at 2330, an index value for the first element to be gathered may be retrieved from location i (location 0) in the array of indices. At 2335, the address of the first gather element may be computed based on the sum of the base address specified for the instruction and the index value obtained for the first gather element. At 2340, the first gather element may be retrieved from a location in memory at the computed address, after which it may be stored in location i (location 0) of a destination register identified for the instruction.
If (at 2350), it is determined that there are more potential gather elements, then at 2355 processing of the next potential load-index-and-gather may begin. For example, a second iteration of the steps shown in 2320-2355, corresponding to the second position in the array of indices (location i=2) may begin. Until the maximum number of iterations (i) has been performed, the steps shown in 2320-2355 may be repeated for each additional iteration with the next value of i. For each additional iteration, if (at 2320) it is determined that a mask bit corresponding to the next position in the array of indices (location i) is not set, then the steps shown in 2330-2355 may be elided for this iteration. In this case, at 2325, the value that was stored in location i in the destination register prior to the execution of the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may be preserved. However, if (at 2320) it is determined that the mask bit corresponding to the next position in the array of indices is set or that no masking has been specified for the LoadIndicesAndGather operation, then at 2330, an index value for the next element to be gathered may be retrieved from location i in the array of indices. At 2335, the address of the first gather element may be computed based on the sum of the base address specified for the instruction and the index value obtained for the first gather element. At 2340, the first gather element may be retrieved from a location in memory at the computed address, after which it may be stored in location i of the destination register for the instruction.
In one embodiment, the number of iterations may be dependent on a parameter for the instruction. For example, a parameter of the instruction may specify the number of index values in the array of indices. This may represent a maximum loop index value for the instruction, and thus, the maximum number of data elements that can be gathered by the instruction. Once the maximum number of iterations (i) has been performed, the instruction may be retired (at 2360).
While several examples describe forms of the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction that gather data elements to be stored in an extended vector register (ZMM register), in other embodiments, these instructions may gather data elements to be stored in vector registers having fewer than 512 bits. For example, if the maximum number of data elements to be gathered can, based on their size, be stored in 256 bits or fewer, the LoadIndicesAndGather instruction may store the gathered data elements in a YMM destination register or an XMM destination register. In several of the examples described above, the data elements to be gathered are relatively small (e.g., 32 bits) and there are few enough of them that all of them can be stored in a single ZMM register. In other embodiments, there may be enough potential data elements to be gathered that (depending on the size of the data elements) they may fill multiple ZMM destination registers. For example, there may be more than 512 bits worth of data elements gathered by the instruction.
Embodiments of the mechanisms disclosed herein may be implemented in hardware, software, firmware, or a combination of such implementation approaches. Embodiments of the disclosure may be implemented as computer programs or program code executing on programmable systems comprising at least one processor, a storage system (including volatile and non-volatile memory and/or storage elements), at least one input device, and at least one output device.
Program code may be applied to input instructions to perform the functions described herein and generate output information. The output information may be applied to one or more output devices, in known fashion. For purposes of this application, a processing system may include any system that has a processor, such as, for example; a digital signal processor (DSP), a microcontroller, an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC), or a microprocessor.
The program code may be implemented in a high level procedural or object oriented programming language to communicate with a processing system. The program code may also be implemented in assembly or machine language, if desired. In fact, the mechanisms described herein are not limited in scope to any particular programming language. In any case, the language may be a compiled or interpreted language.
One or more aspects of at least one embodiment may be implemented by representative instructions stored on a machine-readable medium which represents various logic within the processor, which when read by a machine causes the machine to fabricate logic to perform the techniques described herein. Such representations, known as “IP cores” may be stored on a tangible, machine-readable medium and supplied to various customers or manufacturing facilities to load into the fabrication machines that actually make the logic or processor.
Such machine-readable storage media may include, without limitation, non-transitory, tangible arrangements of articles manufactured or formed by a machine or device, including storage media such as hard disks, any other type of disk including floppy disks, optical disks, compact disk read-only memories (CD-ROMs), compact disk rewritables (CD-RWs), and magneto-optical disks, semiconductor devices such as read-only memories (ROMs), random access memories (RAMs) such as dynamic random access memories (DRAMs), static random access memories (SRAMs), erasable programmable read-only memories (EPROMs), flash memories, electrically erasable programmable read-only memories (EEPROMs), magnetic or optical cards, or any other type of media suitable for storing electronic instructions.
Accordingly, embodiments of the disclosure may also include non-transitory, tangible machine-readable media containing instructions or containing design data, such as Hardware Description Language (HDL), which defines structures, circuits, apparatuses, processors and/or system features described herein. Such embodiments may also be referred to as program products.
In some cases, an instruction converter may be used to convert an instruction from a source instruction set to a target instruction set. For example, the instruction converter may translate (e.g., using static binary translation, dynamic binary translation including dynamic compilation), morph, emulate, or otherwise convert an instruction to one or more other instructions to be processed by the core. The instruction converter may be implemented in software, hardware, firmware, or a combination thereof. The instruction converter may be on processor, off processor, or part-on and part-off processor.
Thus, techniques for performing one or more instructions according to at least one embodiment are disclosed. While certain exemplary embodiments have been described and shown in the accompanying drawings, it is to be understood that such embodiments are merely illustrative of and not restrictive on other embodiments, and that such embodiments not be limited to the specific constructions and arrangements shown and described, since various other modifications may occur to those ordinarily skilled in the art upon studying this disclosure. In an area of technology such as this, where growth is fast and further advancements are not easily foreseen, the disclosed embodiments may be readily modifiable in arrangement and detail as facilitated by enabling technological advancements without departing from the principles of the present disclosure or the scope of the accompanying claims.
Some embodiments of the present disclosure include a processor. In at least some of these embodiments, the processor may include a front end to receive an instruction, a decoder to decode the instruction, a core to execute the instruction, and a retirement unit to retire the instruction. To execute the instruction, the core may include a first logic to retrieve a first index value from a first position in an array of indices whose address in a memory is based on a first parameter for the instruction, the first position within the array to be the lowest-order position within the array of indices, a second logic to compute an address for a first data element to be gathered from the memory based on the first index value, and a base address for a group of data element locations in the memory, the base address based on a second parameter for the instruction, and a third logic to retrieve the first data element from a location in the memory accessed with the address computed for the first data element, a fourth logic to store the first data element to a first position in a destination vector register identified by a third parameter for the instruction, the first position in the destination vector register to be the lowest-order position in the destination vector register. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the core may further include a fifth logic to retrieve a second index value from a second position within the array of indices, the second position within the array to be adjacent to the first position within the array, a sixth logic to compute an address for a second data element to be gathered from the memory based on the second index value, and the base address for the group of data element locations in the memory, a seventh logic to retrieve the second data element from a location in the memory accessed with the address computed for the second data element, the location from which the second data element is to be retrieved to be nonadjacent to the location from which the first data element is to be retrieved, and an eighth logic to store the second data element to a second position in the destination vector register, the second position in the destination vector register to be adjacent to the first position in the destination vector register. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the address computed for the first data element is to be different from the base address for the group of data element locations in the memory. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the core may further include a fifth logic to retrieve, for each additional data element to be gathered not to exceed a maximum number of data elements to be gathered, a respective index value from a next successive position within the array of indices, a sixth logic to compute, for each of the additional data elements, a respective address for the additional data element based on the respective index value, and the base address for the group of data element locations in the memory, a seventh logic to retrieve each additional data element from a respective location in the memory accessed with the address computed for the additional data element, at least two of the locations from which the additional data elements are to be retrieved are to be nonadjacent locations, and an eighth logic to store each additional data element to a respective position in the destination vector register, the respective positions at which the additional elements are stored to be contiguous locations in the destination vector register, and the maximum number of data elements is to be based on a fourth parameter for the instruction. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the core may further include a fourth logic to determine that a bit in a mask register for an additional index value is set, the mask register identified based on a fourth parameter for the instruction, a fifth logic to elide, based the determination that the bit in the mask is not set retrieval of the additional index value, computation of an address for an additional data element based on the additional index value, retrieval of the additional data element, and storage of the additional data element in the destination vector register, and a sixth logic to preserve, based the determination that the bit in the mask is not set, the value in the location in the destination vector register to which the additional data element would otherwise have been stored. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the core may further include a cache, a fourth logic to prefetch an additional index value from the array of indices into the cache, a fifth logic to compute an address for an additional data element to be gathered based on the additional index value, and a sixth logic to prefetch the additional data element into the cache. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the core may include a sixth logic to compute the address for the first data element to be gathered from the memory as a sum of the first index value and the base address for the group of data element locations in the memory. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the core may include a sixth logic to clear each bit in the mask register after it has been determined whether or not the bit was set. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the core may further include a fourth logic to determine that a bit in a mask register for an additional index value is set, the mask register identified based on a fourth parameter for the instruction, a fifth logic to elide, based the determination that the bit in the mask is not set retrieval of the additional index value, computation of an address for an additional data element based on the additional index value, retrieval of the additional data element, and storage of the additional data element in the destination vector register, and a sixth logic to store a NULL value in the location in the destination vector register to which the additional data element would otherwise have been stored. In any of the above embodiments, the core may include a fifth logic to determine the size of the data elements based on a parameter for the instruction. In any of the above embodiments, the core may include a fifth logic to determine the type of the data elements based on a parameter for the instruction. In any of the above embodiments, the first parameter for the instruction may be a pointer. In any of the above embodiments, the second parameter for the instruction may be a pointer. In any of the above embodiments, the core may include a Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) coprocessor to implement execution of the instruction. In any of the above embodiments, the processor may include a vector register file that includes the destination vector register.
Some embodiments of the present disclosure include a method. In at least some of these embodiments, the method may include, in a processor, receiving a first instruction, decoding the first instruction, executing the first instruction, and retiring the first instruction. Executing the first instruction may include retrieving a first index value from a first position in an array of indices whose address in a memory is based on a first parameter for the instruction, the first position within the array being the lowest-order position within the array of indices, computing an address for a first data element to be gathered from the memory based on the first index value, and a base address for a group of data element locations in the memory, the base address being based on a second parameter for the instruction, and retrieving the first data element from a location in the memory accessed with the address computed for the first data element, storing the first data element to a first position in a destination vector register identified by a third parameter for the instruction, the first position in the destination vector register being the lowest-order position in the destination vector register. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the method may include retrieving a second index value from a second position within the array of indices, the second position within the array being adjacent to the first position within the array, computing an address for a second data element to be gathered from the memory based on the second index value, and the base address for the group of data element locations in the memory, retrieving the second data element from a location in the memory accessed with the address computed for the second data element, the location from which the second data element is retrieved being nonadjacent to the location from which the first data element is to be retrieved, and storing the second data element to a second position in the destination vector register, the second position in the destination vector register being adjacent to the first position in the destination vector register. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the address computed for the first data element may be different from the base address for the group of data element locations in the memory. In combination with any of the above embodiments, for at least two additional data elements to be gathered not to exceed a maximum number of data elements to be gathered, the method may include retrieving a respective index value from a next successive position within the array of indices, computing a respective address for the additional data element based on the respective index value, and the base address for the group of data element locations in the memory, retrieving the additional data element from a respective location in the memory accessed with the address computed for the additional data element, and storing the additional data element to a respective position in the destination vector register, at least two of the locations from which the additional data elements are retrieved may be nonadjacent locations, the respective positions at which the additional data elements are stored may be contiguous locations in the destination vector register, and the maximum number of data elements may be based on a fourth parameter for the instruction. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the method may include determining that a bit in a mask register for an additional index value is set, the mask register identified based on a fourth parameter for the instruction, eliding, in response to determining that the bit in the mask is not set retrieving the additional index value, computing an address for an additional data element based on the additional index value, retrieving the additional data element, and storing the additional data element in the destination vector register, and preserving, in response to determining that the bit in the mask is not set, the value in the location in the destination vector register to which the additional data element would otherwise have been stored. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the method may include prefetching an additional index value from the array of indices into a cache, computing an address for an additional data element to be gathered based on the additional index value, and prefetching the additional data element into the cache. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the method may include computing the address for the first data element to be gathered from the memory as a sum of the first index value and the base address for the group of data element locations in the memory. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the method may include clearing each bit in the mask register after it has been determined whether or not the bit was set. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the method may further include determining that a bit in a mask register for an additional index value is set, the mask register identified based on a fourth parameter for the instruction, eliding, based the determination that the bit in the mask is not set retrieval of the additional index value, computation of an address for an additional data element based on the additional index value, retrieval of the additional data element, and storage of the additional data element in the destination vector register, and storing a NULL value in the location in the destination vector register to which the additional data element would otherwise have been stored. In any of the above embodiments, the method may include determining the size of the data elements based on a parameter for the instruction. In any of the above embodiments, the method may include determining the type of the data elements based on a parameter for the instruction. In any of the above embodiments, the first parameter for the instruction may be a pointer. In any of the above embodiments, the second parameter for the instruction may be a pointer.
Some embodiments of the present disclosure include a system. In at least some of these embodiments, the system may include a front end to receive an instruction, a decoder to decode the instruction, a core to execute the instruction, and a retirement unit to retire the instruction. To execute the instruction, the core may include a first logic to retrieve a first index value from a first position in an array of indices whose address in a memory is based on a first parameter for the instruction, the first position within the array to be the lowest-order position within the array of indices, a second logic to compute an address for a first data element to be gathered from the memory based on the first index value, and a base address for a group of data element locations in the memory, the base address based on a second parameter for the instruction, and a third logic to retrieve the first data element from a location in the memory accessed with the address computed for the first data element, a fourth logic to store the first data element to a first position in a destination vector register identified by a third parameter for the instruction, the first position in the destination vector register to be the lowest-order position in the destination vector register. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the core may further include a fifth logic to retrieve a second index value from a second position within the array of indices, the second position within the array to be adjacent to the first position within the array, a sixth logic to compute an address for a second data element to be gathered from the memory based on the second index value, and the base address for the group of data element locations in the memory, a seventh logic to retrieve the second data element from a location in the memory accessed with the address computed for the second data element, the location from which the second data element is to be retrieved to be nonadjacent to the location from which the first data element is to be retrieved, and an eighth logic to store the second data element to a second position in the destination vector register, the second position in the destination vector register to be adjacent to the first position in the destination vector register. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the address computed for the first data element is to be different from the base address for the group of data element locations in the memory. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the core may further include a fifth logic to retrieve, for each additional data element to be gathered not to exceed a maximum number of data elements to be gathered, a respective index value from a next successive position within the array of indices, a sixth logic to compute, for each of the additional data elements, a respective address for the additional data element based on the respective index value, and the base address for the group of data element locations in the memory, a seventh logic to retrieve each additional data element from a respective location in the memory accessed with the address computed for the additional data element, at least two of the locations from which the additional data elements are to be retrieved are to be nonadjacent locations, and an eighth logic to store each additional data element to a respective position in the destination vector register, the respective positions at which the additional elements are stored to be contiguous locations in the destination vector register, and the maximum number of data elements is to be based on a fourth parameter for the instruction. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the core may further include a fourth logic to determine that a bit in a mask register for an additional index value is set, the mask register identified based on a fourth parameter for the instruction, a fifth logic to elide, based the determination that the bit in the mask is not set retrieval of the additional index value, computation of an address for an additional data element based on the additional index value, retrieval of the additional data element, and storage of the additional data element in the destination vector register, and a sixth logic to preserve, based the determination that the bit in the mask is not set, the value in the location in the destination vector register to which the additional data element would otherwise have been stored. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the core may further include a cache, a fourth logic to prefetch an additional index value from the array of indices into the cache, a fifth logic to compute an address for an additional data element to be gathered based on the additional index value, and a sixth logic to prefetch the additional data element into the cache. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the core may include a sixth logic to compute the address for the first data element to be gathered from the memory as a sum of the first index value and the base address for the group of data element locations in the memory. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the core may include a sixth logic to clear each bit in the mask register after it has been determined whether or not the bit was set. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the core may further include a fourth logic to determine that a bit in a mask register for an additional index value is set, the mask register identified based on a fourth parameter for the instruction, a fifth logic to elide, based the determination that the bit in the mask is not set retrieval of the additional index value, computation of an address for an additional data element based on the additional index value, retrieval of the additional data element, and storage of the additional data element in the destination vector register, and a sixth logic to store a NULL value in the location in the destination vector register to which the additional data element would otherwise have been stored. In any of the above embodiments, the core may include a fifth logic to determine the size of the data elements based on a parameter for the instruction. In any of the above embodiments, the core may include a fifth logic to determine the type of the data elements based on a parameter for the instruction. In any of the above embodiments, the first parameter for the instruction may be a pointer. In any of the above embodiments, the second parameter for the instruction may be a pointer. In any of the above embodiments, the core may include a Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) coprocessor to implement execution of the instruction. In any of the above embodiments, the processor may include a vector register file that includes the destination vector register.
Some embodiments of the present disclosure include a system for executing instructions. In at least some of these embodiments, the system may include means for receiving a first instruction, decoding the first instruction, executing the first instruction, and retiring the first instruction. the means for executing the first instruction may include means for retrieving a first index value from a first position in an array of indices whose address in a memory is based on a first parameter for the instruction, the first position within the array being the lowest-order position within the array of indices, means for computing an address for a first data element to be gathered from the memory based on the first index value, and a base address for a group of data element locations in the memory, the base address being based on a second parameter for the instruction, and means for retrieving the first data element from a location in the memory accessed with the address computed for the first data element, means for storing the first data element to a first position in a destination vector register identified by a third parameter for the instruction, the first position in the destination vector register being the lowest-order position in the destination vector register. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the system may include means for retrieving a second index value from a second position within the array of indices, the second position within the array being adjacent to the first position within the array, means for computing an address for a second data element to be gathered from the memory based on the second index value, and the base address for the group of data element locations in the memory, means for retrieving the second data element from a location in the memory accessed with the address computed for the second data element, the location from which the second data element is retrieved being nonadjacent to the location from which the first data element is to be retrieved, and means for storing the second data element to a second position in the destination vector register, the second position in the destination vector register being adjacent to the first position in the destination vector register. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the address computed for the first data element may be different from the base address for the group of data element locations in the memory. In combination with any of the above embodiments, for at least two additional data elements to be gathered not to exceed a maximum number of data elements to be gathered, the system may include means for retrieving a respective index value from a next successive position within the array of indices, means for computing a respective address for the additional data element based on the respective index value, and the base address for the group of data element locations in the memory, means for retrieving the additional data element from a respective location in the memory accessed with the address computed for the additional data element, and means for storing the additional data element to a respective position in the destination vector register, at least two of the locations from which the additional data elements are retrieved may be nonadjacent locations, the respective positions at which the additional data elements are stored may be contiguous locations in the destination vector register, and the maximum number of data elements may be based on a fourth parameter for the instruction. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the system may include means for determining that a bit in a mask register for an additional index value is set, the mask register identified based on a fourth parameter for the instruction, eliding, in response to determining that the bit in the mask is not set retrieving the additional index value, means for computing an address for an additional data element based on the additional index value, means for retrieving the additional data element, and means for storing the additional data element in the destination vector register, and preserving, in response to determining that the bit in the mask is not set, the value in the location in the destination vector register to which the additional data element would otherwise have been stored. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the system may include means for prefetching an additional index value from the array of indices into a cache, means for computing an address for an additional data element to be gathered based on the additional index value, and means for prefetching the additional data element into the cache. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the system may include means for computing the address for the first data element to be gathered from the memory as a sum of the first index value and the base address for the group of data element locations in the memory. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the system may include means for clearing each bit in the mask register after it has been determined whether or not the bit was set. In combination with any of the above embodiments, the system may further include means for determining that a bit in a mask register for an additional index value is set, the mask register identified based on a fourth parameter for the instruction, eliding, based the determination that the bit in the mask is not set retrieval of the additional index value, computation of an address for an additional data element based on the additional index value, retrieval of the additional data element, and storage of the additional data element in the destination vector register, and means for storing a NULL value in the location in the destination vector register to which the additional data element would otherwise have been stored. In any of the above embodiments, the system may include means for determining the size of the data elements based on a parameter for the instruction. In any of the above embodiments, the system may include means for determining the type of the data elements based on a parameter for the instruction. In any of the above embodiments, the first parameter for the instruction may be a pointer. In any of the above embodiments, the second parameter for the instruction may be a pointer.
