3 ms·
Not correcting you, just trying to learn. Is that also called microcode?
by tomcam 4y ago
Not correcting you, just trying to learn. Is that also called microcode?
- Symmetry 4y agoNot quite. When you have a front end that spits an instruction into micro-ops that's a fixed mapping of 1 to 1-3 instruction and your decoder can handle many of those every clock. When you a micro-coded instruction you can have that instruction turn into a whole subroutine of indefinite length and on most current designs you can only decode one at once and it takes over until it completes.
- tomcam 4y agoMan, TIL. Thank you. Had no idea about this architecture.
- jnwatson 4y agoMicro ops are a level higher than microcode.