A Dynamic Multithreading Processor

We present an architecture that features dynamic multithreading execution of a single program. Threads are created automatically by hardware at procedure and loop boundaries and executed speculatively on a simultaneous multithreading pipeline. Data prediction is used to alleviate dependency constraints and enable lookahead execution of the threads. A two-level hierarchy significantly enlarges the instruction window. Efficient selective recovery from the second level instruction window takes place after a mispredicted input to a thread is corrected. The second level is slower to access but has the advantage of large storage capacity. We show several advantages of this architecture: (1) it minimizes the impact of ICache misses and branch mispredictions by fetching and dispatching instructions out-of-order, (2) it uses a novel value prediction and recovery mechanism to reduce artificial data dependencies created by the use of a stack to manage run-time storage, and (3) it improves the ex...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1998
• Where: MICRO
• Authors: Haitham Akkary, Michael A. Driscoll
• Keywords: Dynamic Multithreading Execution, Enable Lookahead Execution, Hardware, Instruction Window, MICRO 1998