REUSE OF RESULTS OF BACK-TO-BACK MICRO-OPERATIONS

摘要

A data processing apparatus has control circuitry for detecting whether a current micro-operation to be processed by processing circuitry is for the same data processing operation and specifies the same at least one operand as the last valid micro-operation processed by the processing circuitry. If so, then the control circuitry prevents the processing circuitry processing the current micro-operation so that an output register is not updated in response to the current micro-operation, and outputs the current value stored in the output register as the result of the current micro-operation. This allows power consumption to be reduced or performance to be improved by not repeating the same computation.

主权项

1. A data processing apparatus comprising:
processing circuitry configured to perform a data processing operation in response to a micro-operation, the processing circuitry having an output register configured to store a result of the data processing operation; and control circuitry configured to detect whether a current micro-operation to be processed by the processing circuitry would give the same result as the last valid micro-operation to be processed by the processing circuitry before the current micro-operation; wherein if the control circuitry detects that said current micro-operation would give the same result as said last valid micro-operation, then the control circuitry is configured to prevent the processing circuitry processing the current micro-operation so that the output register is not updated in response to the current micro-operation, and to control the processing circuitry to output the value stored in the output register as the result of the current micro-operation.