File replication methods and apparatus for reducing port pressure in a clustered processor

摘要

The invention provides techniques for reducing the port pressure of a clustered processor. In an illustrative embodiment, the processor includes multiple clusters of execution units, with each of the clusters having a portion of a register file and a portion of a predicate file associated therewith, such that a given cluster is permitted to write to and read from its associated portions of the register and predicate files. A replication technique in accordance with the invention reduces port pressure by replicating, e.g., a register lock file and a predicate lock file of the processor for each of the clusters. The replicated files vary depending upon whether the technique is implemented with a write-only interconnection or a read-only interconnection.