Appeal No. 95-4708
Application 08/127,782
problem, and to prevent data from being read before it
is properly written, the RF [register file] uses
register scoreboarding.
The above-quoted description from Arnold et al. does further
support the appellants’ reading of Hinton.
We agree with the appellants that nowhere does Hinton
describe or suggest that two writing operations to the same
register or register part or portion, are "effectively" processed
during the same clock cycle. Hinton allows reads and writes to
different registers in the register file to occur but not to the
same targeted register or register parts. See Hinton in column
2, lines 45-53. Hinton teaches that in case of conflict, one of
the operations will be canceled and reissued at a later time.
See column 8, lines 56-68.
Johnson does not make up for the above-mentioned
deficiencies of Hinton. As is correctly noted by the appellants
(Br. at 9), Johnson discloses that operations that have been
executed (but not yet allowed to update the register file) are
placed in a reorder buffer. From the reorder buffer, the
operations are allowed to update the register file "program code
order." The examiner relied on Johnson for the teaching of an
arbitration scheme based on program code order (answer at 5,
lines 8-10). However, what is missing from Hinton is the idea of
7
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007