Method and apparatus for preserving pipeline data during a pipeline stall and for recovering from the pipeline stall

摘要

Methods and apparatus for stalling a pipeline, which methods and apparatus allow data in speed critical pipeline stages to propagate through additional stages of the pipeline. The data is then “caught” and stored in a deferred stall register as it is output from a downstream pipeline stage X. Finally, the data is output from the deferred stall register in a way that it masks the regular output of the pipeline stage X. In this manner, there is no need to store stalled data in a speed critical pipeline stage. Rather, the data can slip ahead, be saved, and be output at an appropriate time such that it appears that the data was stalled in the pipeline stage in which it existed at the time a stall was initiated.