Appeal No. 1998-0524
Application No. 08/522,067
implemented to operate on values represented by a large number
of bits (e.g., 64) using instructions that produce one result.
However, some applications require the manipulation of large
amounts of data which may be represented in a small number of
bits (e.g., in multimedia applications). To improve
efficiency in such applications, certain processors provide
packed data formats. A packed data format is one in which the
bits typically used to represent a single value are broken
into a number of fixed sized data elements, each of which
represents a separate value. For example, a 64-bit register
may be broken into two 32-bit elements, each of which
represents a separate 32-bit value. Prior art processors
provide instructions for separately manipulating each element
in these packed data types in parallel. For example, a packed
add instruction independently adds together corresponding data
elements from a first packed data and a second packed data.
Thus, if a multimedia algorithm requires a loop containing
five operations that must be performed on a large number of
data elements, it is desirable to pack the data and perform
these operations in parallel using packed data instructions.
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