Colin B Hunter

US Patent:

60319925, Feb 29, 2000

Filed:

Jul 5, 1996

Appl. No.:

8/678541

Inventors:

Robert F. Cmelik - Sunnyvale CA
David R. Ditzel - Los Altos Hills CA
Edmund J. Kelly - San Jose CA
Colin B. Hunter - Palo Alto CA
Douglas A. Laird - Los Gatos CA
Malcolm John Wing - Menlo Park CA
Grzegorz B. Zyner - San Jose CA

Assignee:

Transmeta Corporation - Santa Clara CA

International Classification:

G06F 945

US Classification:

395705

Abstract:

A microprocessor for a host computer designed to execute target application programs for a target computer having a target instruction set including the combination of code morphing software, and morph host processing hardware designed to execute instructions of a host instruction set, the combination of the code morphing software and the morph host processing hardware comprising means to translate a set of target instructions into instructions of a host instruction set, means to optimize the instructions of the host instruction set translated from the target application program speculating upon the occurrence of a condition, means to determine under control of the code morphing software official state of the target computer which existed at the beginning of a translation of a set of target instructions during execution of the target application program by the microprocessor, means for updating state of the target computer from state of the host computer when a set of host instructions executes in accordance with the speculation, means to detect failure of the condition during the execution of the set of host instructions, means for updating state of the host computer from state of the target computer when a set of host instructions fails to execute in accordance with the speculation, and means to translate a new set of host instructions without the speculation when a set of host instructions fails to execute in accordance with the speculation.