US 7,321,963 B2
System and method for storing immediate data
Alan B. Kyker, Portland, Oreg. (US); Per Hammarlund, Hillsboro, Oreg. (US); Chan Lee, Portland, Oreg. (US); Robert F. Krick, Fort Collins, Colo. (US); Hitesh Ahuja, Portland, Oreg. (US); William Alexander, Hillsboro, Oreg. (US); and Joseph Rohlman, Portland, Oreg. (US)
Assigned to Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, Calif. (US)
Filed on Feb. 05, 2004, as Appl. No. 10/773,848.
Application 09/984525 is a division of application No. 09/223299, filed on Dec. 30, 1998, granted, now 6,338,132, filed on Jan. 08, 2002.
Application 10/773848 is a continuation of application No. 10/339571, filed on Jan. 10, 2003, granted, now 6,711,669.
Application 10/339571 is a continuation of application No. 09/984525, filed on Oct. 30, 2001, granted, now 7,114,057.
Prior Publication US 2004/0225867 A1, Nov. 11, 2004
This patent is subject to a terminal disclaimer.
Int. Cl. G06F 9/318 (2006.01); G06F 9/28 (2006.01)
U.S. Cl. 712—213  [712/211] 15 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method comprising:
compressing an immediate operand associated with a current instruction;
storing the compressed operand in a selected one of a plurality of fixed-length operand fields, wherein each of the operand fields is associated with one of a plurality of program instructions, the plurality of program instructions including the current instruction, a previous instruction and a next instruction; and
wherein storing the compressed operand further comprises:
storing the compressed operand in the operand field for the previous instruction if the operand field of the previous instruction is available.