Apparatus for Maintaining Program Correctness While Allowing Loads to Be Boosted Past Stores in an Out-of-Order Machine

The present invention relates, in general, to the field of microprocessor design and the issuance of memory instructions therefor. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system, apparatus and method for maintaining program correctness while allowing loads to be boosted past stores in an out-of-order machine.

Early computer processors (also called microprocessors) included a central processing unit or instruction execution unit that executed only one instruction at a time. As used herein the term processor includes complete instruction set computers ("CISC"), reduced instruction set computers ("RISC") and hybrids. In response to the need for improved performance several techniques have been used to extend the capabilities of these early processors including pipelining, superpipelining, superscaling, speculative instruction execution, and out-of-order instruction execution.

Pipelined architectures break the execution of instructions into a number of stages where each stage corresponds to one step in the execution of the instruction. Pipelined designs increase the rate at which instructions can be executed by allowing a new instruction to begin execution before a previous instruction is finished executing. Pipelined architectures have been extended to "superpipelined" or "extended pipeline" architectures where each execution pipeline is broken down into even smaller stages (i.e., microinstruction granularity is increased). Superpipelining increases the number of instructions that can be executed in the pipeline at any given time.

"Superscalar" processors generally refer to a class of microprocessor architectures that include multiple pipelines that process instructions in parallel. Superscalar processors typically execute more than one instruction per clock cycle, on average. Superscalar processors allow parallel instruction execution in two or more instruction execution pipelines. The number of instructions that may be processed is increased due to parallel execution. Each of the execution pipelines may have differing number of stages. Some of the pipelines may be optimized for specialized functions such as integer operations or floating point operations, and in some cases execution pipelines are optimized for processing graphic, multimedia, or complex math instructions.

The goal of superscalar and superpipeline processors is to execute multiple instructions per cycle ("IPC"). Instruction-level parallelism ("ILP") available in programs can be exploited to realize this goal, however, this potential parallelism requires that instructions be dispatched for execution at a sufficient rate. Conditional branching instructions create a problem for instruction fetching because the instruction fetch unit ("IFU") cannot know with certainty which instructions to fetch until the conditional branch instruction is resolved. Also, when a branch is detected, the target address of the instructions following the branch must be predicted to supply those instructions for execution.

Recent processor architectures use a branch prediction unit to predict the outcome of branch instructions allowing the fetch unit to fetch subsequent instructions according to the predicted outcome. Branch prediction techniques are known that can predict branch outcomes with greater than 95% accuracy. These instructions are "speculatively executed" to allow the processor to make forward progress during the time the branch instruction is resolved. When the prediction is correct, the results of the speculative execution can be used as correct results, greatly improving processor speed and efficiency. When the prediction is incorrect, the completely or partially executed instructions must be flushed from the processor and execution of the correct branch initiated.

Early processors executed instructions in an order determined by the compiled machine-language program running on the processor and so are referred to as "in-order" or "sequential" processors. In superscalar processors multiple pipelines can simultaneously process instructions only when there are no data dependencies between the instructions in each pipeline. Data dependencies cause one or more pipelines to "stall" waiting for the dependent data to become available. This is further complicated in superpipelined processors where, because many instructions are executed simultaneously in each pipeline, the potential quantity of data dependencies is large. Hence, greater parallelism and higher performance are achieved by "out-of-order" processors that include multiple pipelines in which instructions are processed in parallel in any efficient order that takes advantage of opportunities for parallel processing that may be provided by the instruction code.

Although out-of-order processing greatly improves throughput, it also increases complexity as compared to simple sequential processors. In fact, due to out-of-order instruction scheduling, a load instruction may be boosted past an older store which stores data to the same location. In this case, the load may hit in the cache and return an older value. Such cases need to be detected and corrected to ensure correct program execution.

Because of this, conventional process design simply allowed for memory instructions to be issued in order so that they can resolve in order. Nevertheless, in those instances where register space is unavailable and program code issues a store to a certain memory location instead (i.e. "register spilling")and then loads from the same location it is possible that the program compiler may not be able to determine that the store and load would map to the same memory location. This is referred to as a lack of memory disambiguation or lack of knowledge as to how the program addresses itself with what is actually mapped. Stated another way, the memory location map was constructed without knowledge that the store and load instructions were directed to the same memory location.

In out-of-order instruction execution, memory instructions may be issued in any order, including loads and stores. While it is possible to dispatch instructions other than loads and stores out of order while maintaining in order execution of these instructions, such is a clearly less than optimal solution. A need therefore exists for scheduling load and store instructions without knowledge of their addresses. Particularly, it is necessary to organize the out-of-order execution such that loads which occur either before or after a store produce a coherent result and that data is not utilized from a cache location that is older than the data that is being stored into it.

As previously noted, in an out-of-order processor, instructions may be executed in any order, inclusive of loads and stores and the effective addresses of these instructions will not be known at the time they are scheduled for execution. Utilizing the system, apparatus and method of the present invention, a determination can be made when a load and store instruction have mapped to the same address location and erroneous data has been retrieved from the cache due to the order in which the load and store instructions were scheduled.

The system, apparatus and method of the present invention ensures program correctness in an out-of-order processor in spite of younger loads being boosted past an older store is denominated a memory disambiguation buffer ("MDB"). The memory disambiguation buffer stores all memory operations that have not yet been retired. Each entry has several fields amongst which are the data and the addresses of the memory operations. An incoming load checks its address against the addresses of all the stores. If there is a match against an older store, then the load must have received old data from the data cache and the load operation is replayed to seek data from the memory disambiguation buffer on the replay. If on the other hand, there were no matches on any older store, the load is assumed to have received the right data from the data cache (assuming a data cache hit). An incoming store checks its address against the addresses of all younger loads. If there is a match against any younger load, then the younger load is replayed along with all of its dependents.

Broadly, what is disclosed is a method for maintaining program correctness while allowing load instructions to be boosted past store instructions for execution in an out-of-order processor. The method comprises the steps of enqueuing addresses and data of unretired load and store instructions in a buffer and checking an address of an incoming load instruction against the enqueued addresses of store instructions. The incoming load instruction is replayed utilizing data from the buffer if a match is determined between the incoming load instruction address and an enqueued older store instruction address. The method may further comprise the step of retiring the store instructions upon retirement of all prior instructions.

Further disclosed herein is a method for maintaining program correctness while allowing load instructions to be boosted past store instructions for execution in an out-of-order processor. The method comprises the steps of: enqueuing addresses and data of unretired load and store instructions in a buffer and checking an address of an incoming store instruction against the enqueued addresses of younger load instructions. The oldest one of the younger load instructions is replayed utilizing data from the buffer if a match is determined between the incoming store instruction address and an enqueued younger load instruction address. The method may further comprises the step of enqueuing the incoming store instruction if a match is not found between the incoming store instruction address and an enqueued younger load instruction address.

Also disclosed herein is a processor for executing out-of-order instructions comprising an instruction scheduling window for determining an execution order of the instructions and a memory disambiguation buffer coupled to the instruction scheduling window for enqueuing addresses and data of unretired load and store instructions. The memory disambiguation buffer is operative to effectuate a replay of an incoming load instruction utilizing the data from the buffer if a match is determined between the incoming load instruction address and an enqueued older store instruction address. In another embodiment, the memory disambiguation buffer is further operative to retire the incoming store instructions after retirement of all prior instructions.

Still further disclosed is a processor for executing out-of-order instructions comprising an instruction scheduling window for determining an execution order of the instructions and a memory disambiguation buffer coupled to the instruction scheduling window for enqueuing addresses and data of unretired load and store instructions. The memory disambiguation buffer is operative to effectuate a replay of an oldest one of the younger load instructions utilizing the data from the buffer if a match is determined between the incoming store instruction address and an enqueued younger load instruction address. In a particular embodiment, the memory disambiguation buffer is further operative to enqueue the incoming store instruction if a match is not found between the incoming store instruction address and an enqueued younger load instruction address.

The aforementioned and other features and objects of the present invention and the manner of attaining them will become more apparent and the invention itself will be best understood by reference to the following description of an exemplary embodiment taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram of a computer system incorporating an apparatus and system in accordance with the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a functional block diagram of a processor incorporating an apparatus and method in accordance with the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a more detailed functional block diagram of a portion of the processor of FIG. 2 illustrating a memory disambiguation buffer ("MDB") and instruction scheduling window ("ISW") in accordance with the present invention and its interrelationship to other functional elements;

FIG. 4 is a simplified logic flowchart of the operation of the MDB of FIG. 3;

FIG. 5 is a functional block diagram of the store queue ("STQ") of FIG. 3;

FIG. 6 is a more detailed view of the embodiment of the MDB shown in the preceding figures illustrating a number of memory instructions including an exemplary sequence of "Add", "Store" ("ST") and "Load" ("LD") operations useful in understanding the operation of the MDB;

FIG. 7 is a more detailed view of the embodiment of the ISW shown in the preceding figures illustrating the relative size of the ISW to that of the MDB;

FIG. 8 is a simplified logic flow representation of the functionality of the MDB of the preceding figures upon the detection of an incoming load operation; and

FIG. 9 is a simplified logic flow representation of the functionality of the MDB of the preceding figures upon the detection of an incoming store operation.

Processor architectures can be represented as a collection of interacting functional units as shown in FIG. 1. These functional units, discussed in greater detail below, perform the functions of fetching instructions and data from memory, preprocessing fetched instructions, scheduling instructions to be executed, executing the instructions, managing memory transactions, and interfacing with external circuitry and devices.

The present invention is described in terms of apparatus and methods particularly useful in a superpipelined and superscalar processor 102 shown in block diagram form in FIG. 1 and FIG. 2. The particular examples represent implementations useful in high clock frequency operation and processors that issue and execute multiple instructions per cycle ("IPC"). However, it is expressly understood that the inventive features of the present invention may be usefully embodied in a number of alternative processor architectures that will benefit from the performance features of the present invention. Accordingly, these alternative embodiments are equivalent to the particular embodiments shown and described herein.

FIG. 1 shows a typical general purpose computer system 100 incorporating a processor 102 in accordance with the present invention. Computer system 100 in accordance with the present invention comprises an address/data bus 101 for communicating information, processor 102 coupled with bus 101 through input/output ("I/O") device 103 for processing data and executing instructions, and memory system 104 coupled with bus 101 for storing information and instructions for processor 102. Memory system 104 comprises, for example, cache memory 105 and main memory 107. Cache memory 105 includes one or more levels of cache memory. In a typical embodiment, processor 102, I/O device 103, and some or all of cache memory 105 may be integrated in a single integrated circuit, although the specific components and integration density are a matter of design choice selected to meet the needs of a particular application.

User I/O devices 106 are coupled to bus 101 and are operative to communicate information in appropriately structured form to and from the other parts of computer 100. User I/O devices may include a keyboard, mouse, card reader, magnetic or paper tape, magnetic disk, optical disk, or other available input devices, including another computer. Mass storage device 117 is coupled to bus 101 may be implemented using one or more magnetic hard disks, magnetic tapes, CDROMs, large banks of random access memory, or the like. A wide variety of random access and read only memory technologies are available and are equivalent for purposes of the present invention. Mass storage 117 may include computer programs and data stored therein. Some or all of mass storage 117 may be configured to be incorporated as a part of memory system 104.

In a typical computer system 100, processor 102, I/O device 103, memory system 104, and mass storage device 117, are coupled to bus 101 formed on a printed circuit board and integrated into a single housing as suggested by the dashed-line box 108. However, the particular components chosen to be integrated into a single housing is based upon market and design choices. Accordingly, it is expressly understood that fewer or more devices may be incorporated within the housing suggested by dashed line 108.

Display device 109 is used to display messages, data, a graphical or command line user interface, or other communications with the user. Display device 109 may be implemented, for example, by a cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor, liquid crystal display (LCD) or any available equivalent.

FIG. 2 illustrates principle components of processor 102 in greater detail in block diagram form. It is contemplated that processor 102 may be implemented with more or fewer functional components and still benefit from the apparatus and methods of the present invention unless expressly specified herein. Also, functional units are identified using a precise nomenclature for ease of description and understanding, but other nomenclature often is often used to identify equivalent functional units.

Instruction fetch unit ("IFU") 202 comprises instruction fetch mechanisms and includes, among other things, an instruction cache for storing instructions, branch prediction logic, and address logic for addressing selected instructions in the instruction cache. The instruction cache is commonly referred to as a portion ("I$") of the level one ("L1") cache with another portion ("D$") of the L1 cache dedicated to data storage. IFU 202 fetches one or more instructions at a time by appropriately addressing the instruction cache. The instruction cache feeds addressed instructions to instruction rename unit ("IRU") 204. Preferably, IFU 202 fetches multiple instructions each cycle and in a specific example fetches eight instructions each cycle.

In the absence of conditional branch instruction, IFU 202 addresses the instruction cache sequentially. The branch prediction logic in IFU 202 handles branch instructions, including unconditional branches. An outcome tree of each branch instruction is predicted using any of a variety of available branch prediction algorithms and mechanisms. More than one branch can be predicted simultaneously by supplying sufficient branch prediction resources. After the branches are predicted, the predicted address is applied to the instruction cache rather than the next sequential address.

IRU 204 comprises one or more pipeline stages that include instruction renaming and dependency checking mechanisms. The instruction renaming mechanism is operative to map register specifiers in the instructions to physical register locations and to perform register renaming to prevent false dependencies. IRU 204 further comprises dependency checking mechanisms that analyze the instructions to determine if the operands (identified by the instructions' register specifiers) cannot be determined until another "live instruction" has completed. The term "live instruction" as used herein refers to any instruction that has been fetched from the instruction cache but has not yet completed or been retired. IRU 204 outputs renamed instructions to instruction scheduling unit (ISU) 206.

Program code may contain complex instructions, also called "macroinstructions", from the running object code. It is desirable in many applications to break these complex instructions into a plurality of simple instructions or "microinstructions" to simplify and expedite execution. In a specific implementation, the execution units are optimized to precisely handle instructions with a limited number of dependencies using a limited number of resources (i.e., registers). Complex instructions include any instructions that require more than the limited number of resources or involve more than the limited number of dependencies. IRU 204 includes mechanisms to translate or explode complex instructions into a plurality of microinstructions. These microinstructions are executed more efficiently in the execution units (e.g., floating point and graphics execution unit ("FGU") 208 and integer execution unit ("IEU") 214) than could the macroinstructions.

ISU 206 receives renamed instructions from IRU 204 and registers them for execution. Upon registration, instructions are deemed "live instructions" in the specific example. ISU 206 is operative to schedule and dispatch instructions as soon as their dependencies have been satisfied into an appropriate execution unit (e.g., integer execution unit (IEU) 208 or floating point and graphics unit (FGU) 210). ISU 206 also maintains the trap status of live instructions. ISU 206 may perform other functions such as maintaining the correct architectural state of processor 102, including state maintenance when out-of-order instruction processing is used. ISU 206 may include mechanisms to redirect execution appropriately when traps or interrupts occur and to ensure efficient execution of multiple threads where multiple threaded operation is used. Multiple thread operation means that processor 102 is running multiple substantially independent processes simultaneously. Multiple thread operation is consistent with but not required by the present invention.

ISU 206 also operates to retire executed instructions when completed by IEU 208 and FGU 210. ISU 206 performs the appropriate updates to register files and control registers upon complete execution of an instruction. ISU 206 is responsive to exception conditions and discards operations being performed on instructions subsequent to an instruction generating an exception in the program order. ISU 206 quickly removes instructions from a mispredicted branch and initiates IFU 202 to fetch from the correct branch. An instruction is retired when it has finished execution and all instructions from which it depends have completed. Upon retirement the instruction's result is written into the appropriate register file and it is no longer deemed a "live instruction".

IEU 208 includes one or more pipelines, each comprising one or more stages that implement integer instructions. IEU 208 also includes mechanisms for holding the results and state of speculatively executed integer instructions. IEU 208 functions to perform final decoding of integer instructions before they are executed on the execution units and to determine operand bypassing amongst instructions in an out-of-order processor. IEU 208 executes all integer instructions including determining correct virtual addresses for load/store instructions. IEU 208 also maintains correct architectural register state for a plurality of integer registers in processor 102. IEU 208 preferably includes mechanisms to access single and/or double precision architectural registers as well as single and/or double precision rename registers.

FGU 210, includes one or more pipelines, each comprising one or more stages that implement floating point instructions. FGU 210 also includes mechanisms for holding the results and state of speculatively executed floating point and graphic instructions. FGU 210 functions to perform final decoding of floating point instructions before they are executed on the execution units and to determine operand bypassing amongst instructions in an out-of-order processor. In the specific example, FGU 210 includes one or more pipelines dedicated to implement special purpose multimedia and graphic instructions that are extensions to standard architectural instructions for a processor. FGU 210 may be equivalently substituted with a floating point unit (FPU) in designs in which special purpose graphic and multimedia instructions are not used. FGU 210 preferably includes mechanisms to access single and/or double precision architectural registers as well as single and/or double precision rename registers.

A data cache memory unit ("DCU") 212 including cache memory 105 shown in FIG. 1 functions to cache memory reads from off-chip memory through external interface unit ("EIU") 214. Optionally, DCU 212 also caches memory write transactions. DCU 212 comprises one or more hierarchical levels of cache memory and the associated logic to control the cache memory. One or more of the cache levels within DCU 212 may be read only memory to eliminate the logic associated with cache writes.

With reference now to FIG. 3, a memory disambiguation buffer ("MDB") 300 is shown which may be integrated as a portion of the integrated circuit processor of the preceding figures to implement the system and method of the present invention. In a processor as above-described in which loads and stores may be issued out-of-order with all other instructions inclusive of memory operations and the resolution of data dependencies among memory operations. The MDB 300 serves to queue all memory load and store instructions and, in the exemplary implementation herein disclosed may comprise 64 entry content addressable memory ("CAM") with 4 write ports/2 read ports; a data array for each entry (4 read ports/2 write ports) as well as associated control and other logic.

As shown, the MDB 300 (which may form a portion of the IRU 204 of FIG. 2), is coupled to an instruction scheduling window ("ISW") 302 (which, in turn, may form a portion of the IRU 204 and ISU 206 of FIG. 2) which will be more fully described hereinafter. The MDB 300 is also coupled to the IEU 208 and FGU 210, receiving 2.times.64b (loads) and 2.times.64b (stores) from the former and 4.times.64b (loads) and 2.times.64b (stores) from the latter. A results buffer 304 receives load data (4.times.64b) from the MDB 300 while a store queue ("STQ") 306 receives 1.times.64b (stores). The STQ 306 will be more fully described hereinafter with respect to FIG. 5. The STQ 306 is coupled to the level 2 cache ("L2$").

Functionally, the MDB 300 is employed to allow more parallelism and greater out of order execution of loads and stores. In the simplest terms, it is responsible for bypassing data from older stores to younger loads. It is also responsible for identifying when incorrect data has been bypassed due to the internally relaxed memory ordering as well as when an unpredicted Read After Write ("RAW") occurs.

The MDB 300 interfaces with the instruction scheduling window 302, L1 cache, miss address file (not shown) and the result buffer 304. It interfaces with the ISW 302 for purposes of flushing younger loads from the pipe and also to determine when an instruction load or store will retire from the window. All loads will return data to the result buffer 304. All stores, when retired from the instruction scheduling window 302 are directed to the STQ 306 and then to the L2 cache 308. If a store misses the L1 cache, it may be dropped and only the store to the L2 cache 308 will proceed. Store data to the MDB 300 will come from either the IEU 208 or the FGU 210.

The instruction scheduling window 302 issues stores only when both the address and data are known. Any instruction which can effect the memory hierarchy (such as altering the state of the Translation Look-aside Buffer ("TLB")) will be issued in order with respect to loads and stores.

Since the MDB 300 is physically smaller than the instruction scheduling window 302, (one half the size in the exemplary embodiment shown) the ISW 302 must track the MDB 300 entries. Using fewer entries than the ISW 302 necessitates a mechanism to stall the issue of memory instructions as disclosed in U. S. patent application Ser. No. 08/882,525 entitled AN APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR RESTRAINING OVER-EAGER LOAD BOOSTING IN AN OUT-OF-ORDER MACHINE and identified filed concurrently herewith by Ramesh Panwar, and Ricky C. Hetherington Also, memory IDs are needed since inside the MDB 300 all entries are arranged in program order to make retiring entries easier.

With reference additionally now to FIG. 4, a logic flow chart illustrating the overall functionality of the MDB 300 is shown. The MDB process 400 begins at step 402 to latch incoming information regarding memory operations. This information is then utilized to update the MDB 300 entries at step 404 followed by a tag compare operation at step 406. At step 408, the producer identification ("PID") of the entries is checked to determine if it is greater than that of other entries and at step 410 to determine if it is less than. A byte overlap step is performed at step 412 as will be more fully described hereinafter. At step 414, the tag hits are qualified and the oldest and youngest hits are picked. Thereafter, at steps 416 and 418 the PID array is read and the data/valid array read respectively.

With respect to step 408 in particular, a PID magnitude comparator may be utilized to compare stores against younger loads: [PID>=PID less than]. For example, a PID checker can be implemented for this purpose which provides an output of "1" when the PID of the store is greater than the PID of the load. In like manner with respect to step 410, a magnitude comparator may also be utilized to compare loads against older stores: [PID<=PID more than]. Again, a PID checker may be implemented to provide an output of 1 when the PID of the load is less than the PID of the store.

The MDB 300 may also include a mask overlap unit which compares the bytemask of the load against the bytemask of the stores in the buffer. If there is no overlap of any bytemask, no bypassing or flushing action is performed by the MDB 300. Similarly, a mask match unit may be implemented since when loads are being compared against older stores, it must be ensured that the bypassing store is supplying all of the data for the requesting load. For this reason, valid bits (bytemasks) of the data coming out of the data array are compared with the bytemasks of the load inside the mask match unit. If the load bytemask is a subset of the data.sub.-- out bytemasks, then the valid bit for the load data is set, otherwise the data from the buffer is determined to be invalid. For this comparison, the 8-bit bytemasks of the load and the data out may be bit-wise ANDed and the output compared with the load bytemask. If the comparison matches, then the data coming out of the buffer (Id.sub.-- data.sub.-- out) is valid.

As previously described, all four ports of the MDB 300 are identical and can service either loads or stores. If only two of the ports (e.g. Port0 and Port2) service stores, the design may be simplified. Only those flops which had hits in the physical address content addressable memory ("CAM") are enabled. This serves to reduce the power consumption of this array considerably. CAM compares should be qualified with a load/store bit so that loads do not compare to loads and stores do not compare to stores. Since at any time there may be a mix of incoming loads and stores, these must also be checked among themselves. All the same conditions must be checked under all of the same restrictions of age as for the loads and stores already enqueued, and the new instructions may be enqueued and checked against themselves.

Because "loads" look only at "stores" and "stores" look only at "loads", there is no possibility of a false hit being registered. In addition, the PID range checks look for "younger" or "older" but do not return a hit for "same age as" since there is no bypass condition for a load to itself. When the new group of instructions contains two unpredicted RAW hazards which require flushing, the PID of the oldest incorrect load needs to be provided for flushing. This means that all the CAM matches for stores should be OR'd together before going to the "pick oldest" logic which would then the yield the oldest incorrect load's PID.

With reference additionally now to FIG. 5, the STQ 306 of FIG. 3 is illustrated in greater detail. The STQ 306 comprises, in pertinent part store compression logic 500 and incoming tag 504 information which supplies inputs to a 16 entry store buffer 502. The buffer 502 is coupled to a number of OR gates/Flop rows 508 which have an associated control logic block 510 for merging byte enables. The STQ306 further comprises an incoming data block 506 which, with the store compression logic 500 provides inputs to a block 512 which provides a 128 bit data path with 2 write and 1 read port for input to the L2 cache 308 (FIG. 3).

In operation, once a store is retired, it is moved from the MDB 300 into the STQ 306 buffer 502. Utilizing a 16 entry buffer 502 as shown in this exemplary illustration, enables byte, halfword, word and doubleword writes to the L2 cache 308. Implementing a "write invalidate" policy, both L1 cache copies are invalidated on a L2 cache 308 write. To improve L2 bandwidth, stores within a 128 bit boundary may be compressed utilizing the store compression logic 500 and one store may be retired per cycle. If an incoming store address matches an entry in the STQ 306 buffer 502, then the incoming store data may be merged (and written over) into the corresponding location. If there are members between two stores, then store compression will not be performed.

With reference now to FIGS. 6 and 7, an exemplary utilization of the apparatus and method of the present invention is shown. Consider the following instructions in program order:

In SPARC.TM. programming language, the above store instruction equates to: store the value in register 10 to the address pointed to by the value of register 8 plus the value of register 6. In like manner, the load instruction is equivalent to: load the value in register 13 from the address pointed to by the value of register 8 plus the value of register 9. In an out-of-order processor as herein disclosed, loads and store may be scheduled in any order, that is, the load instruction may be boosted past the older store which, where R8+R9=R8+R6 is the same location. The processor dependency checking logic provides no means for determining the fact that both the load and the store mapped to the same address and in this example, both the load and the store instructions are dependent upon the add (R8) as well as a load/store dependency.

Thus, although in program order the store instruction should be executed prior to the load, in an out-of-order processor, the load instruction may actually get scheduled for execution ahead of the store. In conventional processor designs in which memory instructions are issued and retired in order, this problem would not exist.

The MDB 300, in the exemplary embodiment shown in FIG. 6, may comprise a 64 entry buffer. As instructions come down the processor pipeline, a slot is allocated in the MDB 300 for each instruction by the resource allocation and pipeline tracking logic. As the resource allocation logic notes a store instruction, it allocates a slot in the buffer for the store instruction, for example, slot 17 as shown. Since the load instruction follows the store, the next slot is allocated for it as slot 18.

As shown, in FIG. 7, the instruction scheduling window 302 is also associated with the MDB 300. In the exemplary implementation shown, the ISW 302 may include 128 entries and would hold the add, store and load instructions previously described. However, since the dependency of the load on the store could not be determined, the load instruction may be scheduled ahead of the store and the load would have retrieved stale data from the data cache. A cycle or two later, the store instruction may be scheduled and the store will store data from the same location from which the load returned data.

To correct this, when the load instruction was initially scheduled, it enters its address in the MDB 300 (i.e. computes the value of R8+R9) at the same time as it accesses the data cache. When the store instruction comes down the processor pipeline thereafter, it computes it address (i.e. R8+R6) and checks it against all younger loads. In this example, a match would be found and a determination is made that a younger load got data passed to it from the cache and the ISW 302 is then requested to replay that load operation from slot 18 on down. When the replay occurs, it will then occur such that the data (also maintained in the MDB 300) will be expected from the MDB 300. In other words, the ISW 302 would be informed that the replay is occurring such that the requisite data would be returned from the MDB 300 for the particular load operation in question.

A determination as to whether a store is younger than a load (load older than a store) or store is older than a load (load younger than a store) is by reference to program order and the instructions are tagged and marked with an entry point in the MDB 300 that is consistent with program order. The complete address in the MDB 300 includes the address and a header.

In the example previously described, the load was younger than the store although the MDB 300 will also function to disambiguate loads which are older than a store. Moreover, although in the example shown, the load immediately followed the store in program order, the instructions need not be in sequential order but need only be resident in the MDB 300 concurrently. Entries in the MDB 300 continue to be maintained until it is scheduled for execution and retired.

The size of the MDB 300 utilized is primarily a function of the anticipated throughput of the overall processor and the amount of on-chip die area available. If the MDB 300 is too small, it will stall when the ISW 302 is filled with load and store instructions. Conversely, if the MDB 300 is the same size as the ISW 302, then a significant amount of on-chip resources may remain idle a significant portion of the time depending on the instructions issued by the processor. As a practical matter the MDB 300 should approximate the number of outstanding loads and stores in the processor since each has to have an entry in it.

As stated previously, the MDB 300 compares incoming loads against stores in a buffer for read after write ("RAW") detection and bypassing and compares incoming stores against loads in the buffer for identifying whether incorrect data has been bypassed to a younger load due to the internally relaxed memory ordering.

This functionality is illustrated in greater detail with respect to FIG. 8 and the following pseudocode:

//Incoming load (LD) physical addresses ("PA") are compared against all enqueued stores for RAW bypassing as shown in step 802 of incoming load process 800.

At decision step 804, if (no match against any enqueued store physical address)

then at step 806 the data from the L1 cache is presumptively correct.

Alternatively, if (matched the physical address of one or more older stores)

then at step 808 return the data from the youngest matched store.

The MDB functionality with respect to incoming stores (ST) is shown with more particularity with respect to the incoming store process 900 of FIG. 9 and the following pseudocode:

//At step 902, the physical addresses of incoming stores are compared against all enqueued load addresses to check

//if a load needs to be flushed due to incorrect bypassing

at decision step 904, if (no match against any enqueued load physical address)

then at step 906 simply enqueue the store and its data.

alternatively, if (match against one or more younger loads)

then at step 908 return the producer identification ("PID") of the oldest matched younger load for flushing.

In the examplary implementation described and illustrated, Loads and Stores can be 64-bit, 32-bit, 16-bit or 8-bit and this must be accounted for when detecting hits for bypassing. A bypassing store must contain all of the required load data. A 64-bit load cannot receive data from a shorter store.

While there have been described above the principles of the present invention in conjunction with specific processor architecture and memory operations, it is to be clearly understood that the foregoing description is made only by way of example and not as a limitation to the scope of the invention. Particularly, it is recognized that the teachings of the foregoing disclosure will suggest other modifications to those persons skilled in the relevant art. Such modifications may involve other features which are already known per se and which may be used instead of or in addition to features already described herein. Although claims have been formulated in this application to particular combinations of features, it should be understood that the scope of the disclosure herein also includes any novel feature or any novel combination of features disclosed either explicitly or implicitly or any generalization or modification thereof which would be apparent to persons skilled in the relevant art, whether or not such relates to the same invention as presently claimed in any claim and whether or not it mitigates any or all of the same technical problems as confronted by the present invention. The applicants hereby reserve the right to formulate new claims to such features and/or combinations of such features during the prosecution of the present application or of any further application derived therefrom.

While the invention has been particularly shown and described with reference to a preferred embodiment thereof, it will be understood by those skills in the art that various other changes in the form and details may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention.