What exactly is a dual-issue processor?

三世轮回 提交于 2019-12-02 17:30:40

Dual issue means that each clock cycle the processor can move two instructions from one stage of the pipeline to another. Where this happens depends on the processor and the company's terminology: it can mean that two instructions are moved from a decode queue to a reordering queue (Intel calls this issue) or it could mean moving instructions (or micro-operations or something) from a reordering queue to an execution port (afaik IBM calls this issue, while Intel calls it dispatch)

But really broadly speaking it should usually mean you can sustain executing two instructions per cycle.

Since you tagged this ARM, I think they're using Intel's terminology. Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 can, each cycle, fetch two instructions (more in Thumb-2), decode two instructions, and "issue" two instructions. On Cortex-A8 there's no out of order execution, although I can't remember if there's still a decode queue that you issue to - if not you'd go straight from decoding instructions to inserting them into two execution pipelines. On Cortex-A9 there's an issue queue, so the decoded instructions are issued there - then the instructions are dispatched at up to 4 per cycle to the execution pipelines.

易学教程内所有资源均来自网络或用户发布的内容,如有违反法律规定的内容欢迎反馈
该文章没有解决你所遇到的问题?点击提问,说说你的问题,让更多的人一起探讨吧!