4 ms·
Yeah, I came here to comment that this sounded very similar to the belt. The comment numbered 3929 on the link you provided is useful as it succinctly explains
by ralferoo 3y ago
Yeah, I came here to comment that this sounded very similar to the belt. The comment numbered 3929 on the link you provided is useful as it succinctly explains the difference:
The addressing (STRAIGHT vs Mill) is different: STRAIGHT refers to the generating instruction in time order, whereas Mill refers to the dropped result. In the hardware STRAIGHT uses a scoreboard approach to block for uncompleted instructions, while Mill uses full static scheduling. Some benefits are shared: no renaming, no encoded result registers. Some are peculiar to one or the other: Mill needs no reorder buffer, while straight need not track instruction retire time in the compiler.
- ralferoo 3y agoActually, after my third reading, I don't think it does infringe on their patent. The last comment on the GP link (3958) states: "The STRAIGHT addressing is not a belt because it uses ordinal instruction addressing, while a belt uses ordinal drop. But the new Clockhands addressing is a belt, pure and simple." But after re-reading the article again, it sounds like it genuinely is an extension of the STRAIGHT system to just add 4 groups of "ordinal instruction addressed" registers rather. It still definitely doesn't fulfil the criteria for "ordinal drop" as described in the comment (by the same author) that I quoted above.
- PoignardAzur 3y agoThe Mill patent is here: https://millcomputing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/uspto9513921.pdf https://millcomputing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/us... I think it covers the STRAIGHT addressing method. IANAL though.