PROVIDING LATE PHYSICAL REGISTER ALLOCATION AND EARLY PHYSICAL REGISTER RELEASE IN OUT-OF-ORDER PROCESSOR (OOP)-BASED DEVICES IMPLEMENTING A CHECKPOINT-BASED ARCHITECTURE

摘要

Providing late physical register allocation and early physical register release in out-of-order processor (OOP)-based devices implementing a checkpoint-based architecture is provided. In this regard, an OOP-based device provides a register management circuit that is configured to employ a combination of the checkpoint approach and the virtual register approach. The register management circuit includes a most recent table (MRT) for tracking mappings of logical register numbers (LRNs) to physical register numbers (PRNs), a physical register file (PRF) storing information for physical registers, a virtual register file (VRF) storing data for virtual registers, and a checkpoint queue for tracking active checkpoints (each of which is a snapshot of the MRT at a given time). The register management circuit applies checkpoint selection criteria for balancing the number of checkpoints, and implements late physical register allocation using virtual registers to provide an effectively larger physical register file and checkpoint-based early release of physical registers.