摘要 |
A microprocessor to reduce wasteful power consumption of the floating-point unit. An instruction invalidation logic circuit is utilized to substitute the instruction not-to-use-the-floating-point unit, in the instruction string supplied from the instruction cache, with an invalidating instruction, hold that invalidating instruction in the floating-point register, and supply that invalidating instruction to a floating-point decoder in the floating-point unit. In cases when the invalidating instruction was continuous, the power consumption in the floating-point data path as well as the in the floating-point decoder and floating-point register is reduced. |