Abstract: A method and system for operating a high frequency outprocessor with increased pipeline length. A new scheme is disclosed to reduce the pipeline by the detection and exploitation of so called “no_dependency” for an instruction. A “no dependency” signal tells that all required source data is available for the instruction at least one cycle before the source data valid bit(s) are inserted into the issue queue. Therefore, one or more stages of the pipeline are bypassed. Bypassing the pipeline stages for this “no dependency” conditions is especially important since a no dependency is found when the queue is empty. Furthermore, this bypass is very effective when the queue is relatively empty. Therefore, introducing such a bypass reduces effectively the performance drawback of a longer pipeline.

Abstract: A storage device and a method for determining the entry with the highest priority in a buffer memory. The method is characterized by the steps of operating a plurality of priority subfilter circuits each of them covering a disjunct subgroup of the total of entries and each selecting the entry with the highest subgroup priority, and selecting the entry associated with the highest priority subgroup. The storage device is able to be allocated and deallocated repeatedly during processing program instructions in a computer system. The storage device is further characterized by an operator for operating a plurality of priority subfilter circuits. Each of priority subfilter circuits covers a disjunct subgroup of the total of entries and each selecting the entry with the highest subgroup priority. The storage device is still further characterized by a selector for selecting the entry associated with the highest priority subgroup.