INSTRUCTION PIPELINE MONITORING DEVICE AND METHOD THEREOF

摘要

In accordance with a specific embodiment of the present disclosure, hardware periodically monitors a fetch cycle that fetches data associated with an address to determine performance parameters associated with the fetch cycle. Information related to the duration of a fetch cycle is maintained as well as information indicating the occurrence of various states and data values related to the fetch cycle. For example, the virtual address being processed during the fetch cycle is saved at the integrated circuit containing the fetch engine. Other performance-related parameters associated with execution of instructions at an execution engine of the pipeline are also monitored periodically. However, monitoring performance of the fetch engine is decoupled from monitoring performance-related events of the execution engine.