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ISCA
2000
IEEE

Vector instruction set support for conditional operations

13 years 7 months ago
Vector instruction set support for conditional operations
Vector instruction sets are receiving renewed interest because of their applicability to multimedia. Current multimedia instruction sets use short vectors with SIMD implementations, but long vector, pipelined implementations have a number of advantages and are a logical next step in multimedia ISA development. Support for conditional operations (as occur in loops containing IF statements) is an important aspect of a vector ISA. Seven ISA alternatives for implementing conditional operations are systematically explored. Performance considerations are discussed through evaluation of a typical IF loop over a range of vector lengths and true conditional values. An approach using masked operations is shown to be one of the better methods, especially if its implementation is able to skip over blocks of false mask bits. Additional analyses of complex IF loops and parallel pipeline implementations support the masked operation approach. The paper concludes with a practical implementation of mas...
James E. Smith, Greg Faanes, Rabin A. Sugumar
Added 25 Aug 2010
Updated 25 Aug 2010
Type Conference
Year 2000
Where ISCA
Authors James E. Smith, Greg Faanes, Rabin A. Sugumar
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