Shared resource queue for simultaneous multithreading processing wherein entries allocated to different threads are capable of being interspersed among each other and a head pointer for one thread is capable of wrapping around its own tail in order to access a free entry

摘要

A queue, such as a first-in first-out queue, is incorporated into a processing device, such as a multithreaded pipeline processor. The queue may store the resources of more than one thread in the processing device such that the entries of one thread may be interspersed among the entries of another thread. The entries of each thread may be identified by a thread identification, a valid marker to indicate if the resources within the entry are valid, and a bank number. For a particular thread, the bank number tracks the number of times a head pointer pertaining to the first entry has passed a tail pointer. In this fashion, empty entries may be used and the resources may be efficiently allocated. In a preferred embodiment, the shared resource queue may be implemented into an in-order multithreaded pipelined processor as a queue storing resources to be dispatched for execution of instructions. The shared resource queue may also be implemented into a branch information queue or into any queue where more than one thread may require dynamic registers.