Apparatus and method for masked move to and from flags register in a processor

摘要

A method and apparatus are provided for storing a flags register in a processor. In response to a macro instruction directing the store operation, such as a push flags macro instruction, a mask is generated using privilege level information (i.e., current operating privilege level) to specify those bits of the flags register that can be stored. The mask is then ANDed with contents of the flags register to yield a result and the result is stored on a stack in memory.