Abstract: The invention involves new microarchitecture apparatus and methods for superscalar microprocessors that support multi-instruction issue, decoupled dataflow scheduling, out-of-order execution, register renaming, multi-level speculative execution, and precise interrupts. These are the Distributed Instruction Queue (DIQ) and the Modified Reorder Buffer (MRB). The DIQ is a new distributed instruction shelving technique that is an alternative to the reservation station (RS) technique and offers a more efficient (improved performance/cost) implementation. The Modified Reorder Buffer (MRB) is an improved reorder buffer (RB) result shelving technique eliminates the slow and expensive prioritized associative lookup, shared global buses, and dummy branch entries (to reduce entry usage). The MRB has an associateive key unit which uses a unique associative key.

Abstract: A distributed instruction queue (DIQ) in a superscalar microprocessor supports multi-instruction issue, decoupled data flow scheduling, out-of-order execution, register renaming, multi-level speculative execution, and precise interrupts. The DIQ provides distributed instruction shelving without storing register values, operand value copying, and result value forwarding, and supports in-order issue as well as out-of-order issue within its functional unit. The DIQ allows a reduction in the number of global wires and replacement with private-local wires in the processor. The DIQ's number of global wires remains the same as the number of DIQ entries and data size increases. The DIQ maintains maximum machine parallelism and the actual performance of the microprocessor using the DIQ is better due to reduced cycle time or more operations executed per cycle.

Abstract: Methods for generating and implementing digital orientational filters. A first method of the present invention is provided for generating digital orientational filters of uniform size but each having a different fixed orientation. A second method provides for dilation of the digital orientation filters generated by the first method, both in a decimated and an undecimated format. A third method of the present invention provides for steering the orientation of the filters generated by the first method. Also, associated VLSI hardware based systems implementing the above methods are disclosed. The above methods and systems allow digital orientational filters to be utilized in computer vision and other applications requiring a large amount of video signal data to be processed in real-time.