Abstract: The present invention is directed to a conveyor system adapted to transfer palletized loads along a generally horizontal path under the force of gravity. In one preferred form, the conveyor system of the present invention includes a support structure which generally extends horizontally from an input end to an output end and includes an upwardly facing support surface for supportively engaging a load, such as a palletized load. A longitudinally extending ramp member includes an upwardly facing portion and is pivotally attached to the support structure for movement between a first position and a second position. When in the first position, the upwardly facing portion declines as it projects forwardly toward the output end. When in the second position, the ramp portion declines as it projects rearwardly toward the input end. The ramp member preferably includes two sides which are each angled from the horizontal.

Abstract: A data processing system comprised of a memory, a translation lookaside buffer (TLB) providing access to the memory, and an instruction cache connected to the memory. A two entry translation write buffer (TWB) has a first entry that is a first logical register and an associated first physical address register and a second entry that is a second logical register and an associated second physical address register. A physical address bus is connected to the TWB and a logical address bus is connected to the TLB and to the TWB, the logical address bus presenting an instruction pointer to the TLB and to the TWB. The instruction pointer is comprised of logical address bits including upper order bits, lower order bits, and a single bit having a first value or a second value. The single bit provides for translation of even-number pages for which the single bit has the first value and for odd-number pages for which the single bit has the second value.

Abstract: A late cancel method and apparatus for a high performance microprocessor system is disclosed. The invention is advantageously utilized in a microprocessor system comprising a processor, an external cache memory and a main memory. The processor incorporates logic to determine whether an access directed to the external cache memory has resulted in a cache hit or miss. In operation, the processor requests a desired instruction from the external cache memory which provides a cache word and cache tag to the processor before a validity determination has been made. The processor determines whether the instruction is valid, while concurrently, the processor begins to pre-decode and decode the cache word as an instruction. If the processor determines that a cache hit has occurred, the cache word proceeds normally through decoding to execution by the processor.

Abstract: An instruction fetch unit in which an early instruction fetch is initiated to access a main memory simultaneously with checking a cache for the desired instruction. On a slow path to main memory is a large main translation lookaside buffer (TLB) that holds address translations. On a fast path is a smaller translation write buffer (TWB), a mini-TLB, that holds recently used address translations. A guess fetch access in initiated by presenting an address to the main memory in parallel with presenting the address to the cache. The address is compared with the contents of the TWB for a hit and with the contents of the cache for a hit. The guess access is allowed to proceed upon the condition that there is a hit in the TWB (the TWB is able to translate the logical address into a physical address) and a miss in the I-cache (the data are not available in the I-cache and hence the guess access of main memory is necessary to get the data).