ATI Patent: Side tables annotating an instruction stream

[rwolf]

What on earth is this for?

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-...7,069,421.PN.&OS=PN/7,069,421&RS=PN/7,069,421

A microprocessor chip, and methods for use in that microprocessor chip. The chip has instruction pipeline circuitry and address translation circuitry

Looking at the drawings it looks like you can execute x86 code on a risc chip and the translation happens in hardware.

Not sure what this has to do with 3D or video products?

 

[nelg]

That sounds like the IP of that company that AMD bought many moons ago called Nexgen.

 

[rwolf]

Here is a diagram...

 

[Jawed]

OK, first wild stab:

with virtual memory coming to GPUs courtesy of Vista, this provides an opportunity for the GPU to automatically execute in place any SSE code.

This could be fun.

More seriously, here's some other patent applications that may relate:

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=3&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&p=1&S1=%28tapestry+AND+x86%29.BIS.&OS=spec/(tapestry+and+x86)&RS=SPEC/(tapestry+AND+x86)

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.html&r=4&f=G&l=50&d=PG01&p=1&S1=%28tapestry+AND+x86%29.BIS.&OS=spec/(tapestry+and+x86)&RS=SPEC/(tapestry+AND+x86)

I found those with a search on the term "Tapestry and X86".

There's an awful lot of results on a patent search:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htm&r=0&p=1&f=S&l=50&Query=spec%2F%28tapestry+and+x86%29&d=PTXT

Jawed

 

[Jawed]

A company called Chromatic Research was purchased by ATI in 1998. It seems Chromatic had designed a RISC processor which was programmed to execute x86. This system is/was called Tapestry.

For several years, Intel and others have implemented the X86 instruction set using a RISC execution core, though the RISC instruction set has not been exposed for use by programs. The Tapestry computer takes three new approaches. First, the Tapestry machine exposes both the native RISC instruction set and the X86 instruction set, so that a single program can be coded in both, with freedom to call back and forth between the two.

[...]

Second, an X86 program may be translated into native RISC code, so that X86 programs can exploit many more of the speed opportunities available in a
RISC instruction set.

[...]

Third, these two approaches cooperate to provide an additional level of benefit.

http://gauss.ffii.org/PatentView/EP1151374

Jawed

 

[Inane_Dork]

And I was about to start a stupid rumor about how AMD would buy ATi and then extend Reverse Hyperthreading to include the GPU...

 

[aaronspink]

What on earth is this for?

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-...7,069,421.PN.&OS=PN/7,069,421&RS=PN/7,069,421



Looking at the drawings it looks like you can execute x86 code on a risc chip and the translation happens in hardware.

Not sure what this has to do with 3D or video products?

It doesn't. A while back ATI had a project to design an x86 compatible chip. The chip AFAIK, never made it to tapeout. This is likely a patent related to that design.

 

[Sobek]

It's part of the insane diabolical plans of AMD for buying out ATI and integrating a GPU onto their CPU!

I swear

 

[Guden Oden]

A company called Chromatic Research was purchased by ATI in 1998.

I have a graphics card based on the Chromatic MPact media processor. It's equipped with an 8MB dual-channel 600MHz RDRAM video buffer (1.2GB/s) and can do 3D rendering and DVD decoding with little CPU intervention. It boasts of an on-chip programmable VLIW RISC processor which can be reconfigured in realtime to do various tasks. Not sure if the 3D rendering is done through a hardware pipeline or if it's this VLIW thingy that rasterizes in software, but it could run Final Fantasy 7 at a good clip. It didn't have any proper OpenGL support tho, just some miniGL wrappers that sort of ran Quake and Half-Life at very juddering frame rates.

Oh, and the DVD playback feature didn't work on my crappy Socket7 mobo (VIA Apollo MVP2 - worst AGP chipset ever made in history; slow as fook and buggy).

 

[rwolf]

So you guys think they are just patenting old ip.