skip to main content
article
Free Access

Applications of pipelining to firmware

Published:01 December 1984Publication History
Skip Abstract Section

Abstract

It has been found that pipelining at the firmware level of machine organization can provide significant execution time benefits for certain types of instructions. The essential concept involved with this approach is the pipelining of operations within the hardware under direct control of the firmware, rather than the pipelining of microinstructions. Specifically, multiple data values exist within the machine's datapaths which have undergone different amounts of processing.

This paper describes the application of these techniques to a specific pipelined computer. A brief description of the system level pipeline is provided with two examples of the firmware pipeline approach. The operations of floating point normalization and memory transfers have been described in detail.

References

  1. 1 A. K. Agrawala and T. G. Rauscher, Foundations of Microprogramming - Architecture, Software, and Applications, Academic Press, New York, New York, 1976.]]Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  2. 2 M. Andrews, Principles of Firmware Engineering in Microprogram Control, Computer Science Press, Potomac, Maryland, 1980.]] Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  3. 3 J. A. Fisher, "2N-Way Jump Microinstruction Hardware and an Effective Instruction Binding Method," Proc 13th Annual Microprogramming Workshop, November 1980.]] Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  4. 4 T. R. Gross and J. L. Hennessy, "Optimizing Delayed Branches," Proc 15th Annual Microprogramming Workshop, October 1982.]] Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  5. 5 P.M. Kogge, The Architecture of Pipelined Computers, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1981.]] Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  6. 6 A. Mathialagan and N. N. Biswas, "Bit Steering in the Minimization of Control Memory in Microprogrammed Digital Computers," IEEE Trans on Computers, C-30, pp 144-147, February 1981.]]Google ScholarGoogle Scholar

Index Terms

  1. Applications of pipelining to firmware

      Recommendations

      Comments

      Login options

      Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

      Sign in

      Full Access

      • Published in

        cover image ACM SIGMICRO Newsletter
        ACM SIGMICRO Newsletter  Volume 15, Issue 4
        MICRO 17: Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Microprogramming Workshop
        Dec. 1984
        302 pages
        ISSN:1050-916X
        DOI:10.1145/384281
        Issue’s Table of Contents
        • cover image ACM Conferences
          MICRO 17: Proceedings of the 17th annual workshop on Microprogramming
          December 1984
          325 pages

        Copyright © 1984 Author

        Publisher

        Association for Computing Machinery

        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        • Published: 1 December 1984

        Check for updates

        Qualifiers

        • article
      • Article Metrics

        • Downloads (Last 12 months)19
        • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2

        Other Metrics

      PDF Format

      View or Download as a PDF file.

      PDF

      eReader

      View online with eReader.

      eReader
      About Cookies On This Site

      We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website.

      Learn more

      Got it!