Appeal No. 96-2499
Application No. 08/204,521
are output by the previous instruction. The claimed
“comparison logic..for determining if flags...read by said
given instruction are a superset of flags of said flag
register output by said previous instruction...” inherently
allows for a partial updating because when a subsequent
instruction requires a “superset” of the flags of the flag
register that are output by the previous instruction, this can
only arise when registers can be partially updated [see page
28 of the brief and page 87 of the specification]. As argued
by appellants (page 29 of the brief), “[w]ithout the ability
to allow partial register updating, the ordinary practitioner
viewing Cocke’s renaming system would have no motivation to
check for ‘superset’ conditions, as claimed.”
Moreover, we also agree with appellants that even if we
assumed that the registers of Cocke can be partially updated,
“Cocke provides absolutely no circuitry nor does Cocke provide
any method by which to process the special conditions required
to perform partial register updates” [brief-page 31].
Turning to claims 1 through 3 and 48, these claims also
require the partial register updating capability discussed
supra because they recite an array read means that supplies
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