RESERVATION STATION FOR A FLOATING POINT PROCESSING UNIT

摘要

A reservation station with format conversion logic enables the implementation of a superscalar computer processing system which incorporates both a floating point functional unit and non-floating point functional units. By converting operand data in a floating point reservation station from external formats to an internal floating point format, a system incorporating such a floating point reservation station enables the representation of operand data in uniform external formats outside floating point arithmetic units (e.g., in a reorder buffer, on operand and result busses, and within non-floating functional units) while also enabling the use of a specialized internal representation (internal floating point format) within floating point arithmetic units. A system incorporating multiple functional units and such a floating point reservation station enables the use of superscalar techniques for exploiting parallelism between floating point and non-floating point instructions because operands and results are externally represented in uniform external formats. Specialized logic within the floating point reservation station converts operand formats.