2–22 Internal Architectur e
21264/EV68A Hardware Reference Manual
Retire ofOperate Instructions into R31/F31
2.4.1 Floating-Point Divide/Square Root Early Retire
The floating-pointdivider and square root unit can detect that, for many combinations
of source operand values, no exception can be generated. Instructions with these oper-
ands can be retiredbefore the result is generated. When detected, they are retired with
the same latencyas the FP add class. Early retirement is not possible for the following
instruction/operand/architecturestate conditions:
Instructionis not a DIV or SQRT.
SQRTsource operand is negative.
Divide operandexponent_a is 0.
Eitheroperand is NaNor INF.
Divide operandexponent_b is 0.
Trappingmode is /I (inexact).
INE statusbit is 0.
Earlyretirement is also not possible for divide instructions if the resulting exponent has
any of the followingcharacteristics (EXP is the result exponent):
DIVT,DIVG: (EXP >= 3FF16) OR (EXP <= 216)
DIVS,D IVF: (EXP>= 7F16)OR (EXP <= 38216)
2.5 Retire of Op erate Instructions into R31/F31
Many instructionsthat have R31 or F31 as their destination are retired immediately
upondecode (stage 3). These instructions do not produce a result and are removed from
the pipelineas well. They do not occupy a slot in the issue queues and do not occupy a
functionalunit. Table 2–6 lists these instructionsand some of their characteristics. The
instructiontype in Table 2–6 is from Table C-6 in Appendix C of the Alpha Architecture
Handbook,Version 4.
Floating-pointDIV/SQRT 11+ latency Addlatency of unit reuse for the instruction indicated in Table
2–4.For example, latency for a single-precision fdiv would be
11plus 9 from Table2–4. Latency is 11if hardware detects that
noexception is possible (see Section 2.4.1).
Floating-pointconditional
branch 11 Branchinstruction mispredict is reportedin stage 7.
BSR/JSR 10 JSRinstruction mispredict is reported ins tage8.
Table 2–5 Minimum Retire Latenc iesfor Instruction Cl asses (Continu ed)
InstructionClass RetireStage Comments