Abstract
The storage requirement of a horizontal microprogram can be reduced by optimal packing of micro-operations into micro-instructions. The purpose of this paper is to examine micro-instruction generation for horizontally microprogrammable computers in order to reduce the number of required micro-instructions for a loop-free segment of micro-operations. Although some methods for solving this problem exist, so far no systematic approach has been used to determine what type of analysis must be performed on each sequential segment of micro-operations. In this paper, the micro-instruction generation process is analyzed and two optimization methods are presented. The first method is algorithmic in that it will always generate the minimum micro-instruction set for a given subblock of micro-operations. The other method is heuristic and does not always result in the minimum micro-instruction set. The methods developed here are shown to achieve better results than those of the existing methods.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 98-106 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Proceedings of the Annual International Symposium on Microarchitecture, MICRO |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 30 1974 |
| Externally published | Yes |
| Event | 7th Annual Workshop on Microprogramming, MICRO 1974 - Palo Alto, United States Duration: Sep 30 1974 → Oct 2 1974 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Hardware and Architecture