US Patent No: 7,353,364

Number of patents in Portfolio can not be more than 2000

Apparatus and method for sharing a functional unit execution resource among a plurality of functional units

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Importance

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Abstract

An apparatus and method for sharing a functional unit. In one embodiment, a processor may include instruction fetch logic configured to issue instructions, and a first functional unit configured to execute instructions issued from the instruction fetch logic and to execute operations issued from a second functional unit, where the operations are issued asynchronously with respect to the instructions. The second functional unit may be configured to provide one or more operands corresponding to a given operation to the first functional unit. The first functional unit may include temporary result storage configured to store a result of the given operation while the first functional unit executes a given instruction issued from the instruction fetch logic, and the first functional unit may be further configured to use the stored result as an operand of an operation issued subsequently to the given operation.

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First Claim

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Patent Owner(s)

Patent OwnerAddressTotal Patents
SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC.SANTA CLARA, CA9061

International Classification(s)

  • [Classification Symbol]
  • [Patents Count]

Inventor(s)

Inventor Name Address # of filed Patents Total Citations
Chong, Jike Austin, TX 4 10
Grohoski, Gregory F Austin, TX 53 496
Olson, Christopher Austin, TX 9 28

Cited Art

Patent Info (Count) # Cites Year
 
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7,080,111 Floating point multiply accumulator 6 2001
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SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC. (8)
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GOOGLE INC. (7)
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5,987,587 Single chip multiprocessor with shared execution units 20 1997
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6,212,544 Altering thread priorities in a multithreaded processor 200 1997
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6,694,425 Selective flush of shared and other pipeline stages in a multithread processor 56 2000
6,681,345 Field protection against thread loss in a multithreaded computer processor 48 2000
 
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION (4)
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MATSUSHITA ELECTRIC INDUSTRIAL CO., LTD. (2)
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MOSAID TECHNOLOGIES INCORPORATED (2)
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HEWLETT-PACKARD DEVELOPMENT COMPANY, L.P. (1)
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HITACHI, LTD. (1)
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INFINEON TECHNOLOGIES AG (1)
7,120,660 Method of and apparatus for modular multiplication 2 2003
 
LSI LOGIC CORPORATION (1)
6,847,985 Floating point divide and square root processor 33 2001
 
LUCENT TECHNOLOGIES INC. (1)
6,530,014 Near-orthogonal dual-MAC instruction set architecture with minimal encoding bits 5 1998
 
MICROSOFT CORPORATION (1)
6,725,354 Shared execution unit in a dual core processor 11 2000
 
MOAB ARCHES LLC (1)
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MOTOROLA, INC. (1)
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RENESAS ELECTRONICS CORPORATION (1)
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Patent Citation Ranking

Forward Cites

Patent Info (Count) # Cites Year
 
HIMAX TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED (1)
8,280,940 Data processing apparatus with shadow register and method thereof 0 2007
 
SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC. (1)
8,356,185 Apparatus and method for local operand bypassing for cryptographic instructions 0 2009
 
VIA TECHNOLOGIES, INC. (1)
7,664,810 Microprocessor apparatus and method for modular exponentiation 1 2005

Maintenance Fees

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7.5 Year Payment $3600.00 $1800.00 $900.00 Oct 1, 2015
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