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

摘要

A method and apparatus are provided for writing to a flags register in a pipeline microprocessor. Responsive to a macro instruction that directs a write to the flags register, a mask is generated using destination information for the write and privilege level information for the write. The mask is then ANDed with new values for bits within the flags register and the result is written to the flags register in a single instruction cycle.