| 摘要 |
Disclosed is a virtual cluster architecture and method. The virtual cluster architecture includes N virtual clusters, N register files, M sets of function units, a virtual cluster control switch, and an inter-cluster communication mechanism. This invention uses a way of time sharing or time multiplexing to alternatively execute a single program thread across multiple parallel clusters. It minimizes the hardware resources for complicated forwarding circuitry or bypassing mechanism by greatly increasing the tolerance of instruction latency in the datapath. This invention may distribute function units serially into pipeline stages to support composite instructions. The performance and the code sizes of application programs can therefore be significantly improved with these composite instructions, of which the introduced latency can be completely hidden in this invention. This invention also has the advantage of being compatible with the program codes developed on conventional multi-cluster architectures.
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