Invention Grant
- Patent Title: Interrupt and exception handling for multi-streaming digital processors
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Application No.: US12274104Application Date: 2008-11-19
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Publication No.: US07900207B2Publication Date: 2011-03-01
- Inventor: Mario D. Nemirovsky , Adolfo M. Nemirovsky , Narendra Sankar
- Applicant: Mario D. Nemirovsky , Adolfo M. Nemirovsky , Narendra Sankar
- Applicant Address: US CA Sunnyvale
- Assignee: MIPS Technologies, Inc.
- Current Assignee: MIPS Technologies, Inc.
- Current Assignee Address: US CA Sunnyvale
- Agency: Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox P.L.L.C.
- Main IPC: G06F15/76
- IPC: G06F15/76 ; G06F9/46

Abstract:
A multi-streaming processor has a plurality of streams for streaming one or more instruction threads, a set of functional resources for processing instructions from streams, and interrupt handler logic. The logic detects and maps interrupts and exceptions to one or more specific streams. In some embodiments, one interrupt or exception may be mapped to two or more streams, and in others two or more interrupts or exceptions may be mapped to one stream. Mapping may be static and determined at processor design, programmable, with data stored and amendable, or conditional and dynamic, the interrupt logic executing an algorithm sensitive to variables to determine the mapping. Interrupts may be external interrupts generated by devices external to the processor software (internal) interrupts generated by active streams, or conditional, based on variables. After interrupts are acknowledged, streams to which interrupts or exceptions are mapped are vectored to appropriate service routines. In a synchronous method, no vectoring occurs until all streams to which an interrupt is mapped acknowledge the interrupt.
Public/Granted literature
- US20090125660A1 Interrupt and Exception Handling for Multi-Streaming Digital Processors Public/Granted day:2009-05-14
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