Method and apparatus for prioritizing processor scheduler queue operations

摘要

A method and processor are described for implementing programmable priority encoding to track relative age order of operations in a scheduler queue. The processor may comprise a scheduler queue configured to maintain an ancestry table including a plurality of consecutively numbered row entries and a plurality of consecutively numbered columns. Each row entry includes one bit in each of the columns. Pickers are configured to pick an operation that is ready for execution based on the age of the operation as designated by the ancestry table. The column number of each bit having a select logic value indicates an operation that is older than the operation associated with the number of the row entry that the bit resides in.