Wayne R Scott

US Patent:

63178249, Nov 13, 2001

Filed:

Mar 27, 1998

Appl. No.:

9/049827

Inventors:

Shreekant S. Thakkar - Portland OR
Wayne H. Scott - Hillsboro OR
Patrice Roussel - Portland OR

Assignee:

Intel Corporation - Santa Clara CA

International Classification:

G06F 1500

US Classification:

712222

Abstract:

A method and apparatus for performing a move mask operation. The present invention provides a method and apparatus for performing operations on packed data values of a first size and format and conversion of the results to data of a second size and format by eliminating redundant data. The present invention is useful, for example, when comparisons are performed on floating point data that is typically larger (e. g. , 64 bits) than integer data (e. g. , 32 bits) and integer operations are preformed based on the result. Because many processors branch based on integer data, the comparison results stored as floating point data must be transferred to an integer register prior to branching. The present invention takes advantage of redundancy of the floating point comparison results to transfer enough data to convey the comparison result to integer registers with a single instruction.