COMBINED BYTE-PERMUTE AND BIT SHIFT UNIT

摘要

A processor includes a decode unit and a byte permute unit. The byte permute unit receives an instruction from the decode unit. The byte permute unit determines whether the instruction corresponds to a shuffle instruction or a shift instruction. For a shuffle instruction, the byte permute unit uses a byte shuffler to perform a shuffle operation indicated by the instruction. For a shift instruction that indicates a shift magnitude, the byte permute unit uses the byte shuffler to byte-level shift a source operand corresponding to the instruction by an integer number of bytes. The byte permute unit also generates a sequence of output bits by bit-shifting the byte-level shifted source operand by a number of bits such that the sum of the number of bits and the integer number of bytes is equal to the shift magnitude.