Appeal No. 2004-0909 Page 3 Application No. 09/053,398 aligned at 16-byte boundaries. In addition, a processor's state is saved without initialization. Streamlining the data structure of the processor's state and eliminating unnecessary operations, assert the appellants, reduces the time required to save and restore the processor's state. (Id. at 5.) A further understanding of the invention can be achieved by reading the following claim. 1. A method comprising: decoding a single instruction by a processor, said processor capable of operating under a plurality of operational modes and operand sizes; in response to said decoding said single instruction transferring contents of a plurality of registers associated with at least a functional unit in the processor to a memory according to a predetermined format into a plurality of groups of data, each group of data being aligned at an address boundary which corresponds to a multiple of 2N bytes, the contents excluding instructions of the processor, the predetermined format being constant for the plurality of operational modes and operand sizes and defining a data structure including control word for the at least functional unit; and retaining the contents of the plurality of registers after said transferring. Claims 1-26 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over U.S. Patent No. 5,410,682 ("Sites").Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007