Claims
- 1. An article, comprising an instruction stored on a storage medium, the instruction including fields for:an opcode; operand data, the operand data being compressed prior to being stored in the instruction on the storage medium, wherein compressed operand data is a first number of bits and uncompressed operand data is a second number of bits, and wherein the first number of bits is less than the second number of bits; and a control code, separate from the opcode, specifying which of a plurality of compression techniques is associated with the operand data.
- 2. The article according to claim 1, wherein the first number of bits is one half the second number of bits.
- 3. The article according to claim 1, wherein the instruction has a predetermined bit length.
- 4. A method for storing an operand in at least one of a plurality of program instructions, comprising:allocating a fixed number of bits in each of the plurality of program instructions for storing the operand, wherein the plurality of program instructions includes a current instruction and a previous instruction; compressing the operand; splitting the compressed operand into a first portion and a second portion; storing one of the first portion and the second portion in the fixed number of bits of the previous instruction; and storing the other one of the first portion and the second portion in the fixed number of bits of the current instruction.
- 5. A method for storing an operand in at least one of a plurality of program instructions, comprising:allocating a fixed number of bits in each of the plurality of program instructions for storing the operand, wherein the plurality of program instructions includes a current instruction and a next instruction; compressing the operand; splitting the compressed operand into a first portion and a second portion; storing one of the first portion and the second portion in the fixed number of bits of the current instruction; and storing the other one of the first portion and the second portion of the operand in the fixed number of bits of the next instruction.
- 6. A method for storing an operand in at least one of a plurality of program instructions, comprising:allocating a fixed number of bits in each of the plurality of program instructions for storing the operand, wherein the plurality of program instructions comprises a previous instruction, a current instruction, and a next instruction; compressing the operand; and storing the compressed operand in the fixed number of bits in a selected one of the previous instruction, the current instruction, and the next instruction, wherein the selected one is: the previous instruction if the fixed number of bits of the previous instruction is available; the current instruction if the fixed number of bits of the previous instruction is unavailable; and the next instruction if the fixed number of bits of the previous instruction is unavailable and the fixed number of bits of the current instruction is unavailable.
- 7. A method for storing an operand in at least one of a plurality of program instructions, comprising:allocating a fixed number of bits in each of the plurality of program instructions for storing the operand, wherein the plurality of program instructions comprise a current instruction and a previous instruction; compressing the operand of the current instruction; determining if a bit pattern of the compressed operand of the current instruction is identical to a bit pattern of a compressed operand stored in the previous instruction; and indicating, if the bit patterns are identical, that the compressed operand stored in the previous instruction is shared with the current instruction and the previous instruction.
- 8. The method according to claim 6, further comprising:inserting a new instruction if the fixed number of bits of each of the previous instruction, the current instruction, and the next instruction is unavailable.
Parent Case Info
This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/984,525, filed Oct. 30, 2001, which is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/223,299, filed Dec. 30, 1998 (now U.S. Pat. No. 6,338,132, issued Jan. 8, 2002), each of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entireties.
US Referenced Citations (14)
Continuations (1)
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Number |
Date |
Country |
Parent |
09/984525 |
Oct 2001 |
US |
Child |
10/339571 |
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US |