Appeal No. 96-4033
Application No. 08/086,354
of the prefetched address has already been initiated and access
time is reduced.
The Prior Art
Lee also relates to apparatus for conditional branching
in a central processing unit (CPU). In discussing the background
of the invention at column 1, lines 39-46, Lee discloses that
"When a conditional branch instruction is executed with the
condition true, it causes the CPU to continue execution at a new
address referred to as a target address. Since instruction
fetching is going on simultaneously with instruction decoding and
execution in a pipelined computer, the computer has already
fetched the instruction following the branch instruction in the
program." The CPU must hold up the instruction pipeline following
the branch instruction until the outcome of the branch instruction
is known and the proper instruction is fetched (column 1, lines
48-51).
The Rejection under 35 U.S.C. §103
We note that, except for claim 21, appellants have not
specifically argued the patentability of any dependent claim,
indicating how it defines appellants' invention over the prior
art. Accordingly, appellants’ dependent claims 13-20 stand or
4
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