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The following are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, or other countries, or
both:
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Other company, product, and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.
All information contained in this document is subject to change without notice. The products described in this document
are NOT intended for use in applications such as implantation, life support, or other hazardous uses where malfunction
could result in deat h, bodil y injury, o r cata stroph ic prop erty dam age. Th e inform ation c ontain ed in thi s docu ment do es not
affect or change IBM pro duct specifi cations or warranties . Nothing in this do cument s hall opera te as an ex press or imp lied
license or indemnity under the intellectual property rights of IBM or third parties. All information contained in this document was obtained in specific environments, and is presented as an illustration. The results obtained in other operating
environm ents may vary.
THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED ON AN “AS IS” BASIS. In no event will IBM be
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List of Figures .............................................................................................................. 13
List of Tables ................................................................................................................ 15
About This Manual ........................................................................................................ 19
Who Should Read This Manual ............................................................................................................ 19
Related Publications ............................................................................................................................. 19
Conventions Used in This Manual ........................................................................................................ 20
Using This Manual with the Programming Environments Manual ......................................................... 22
1.4 PowerPC Registers and Programming Mod el ................................... ............................................. 42
1.5 Instruction Set ................................................................................................................................. 45
1.5.1 PowerPC Instruction Set ....................................................................................................... 45
1.5.2 750GX Microprocessor Instruction Set .................................................................................. 47
Table 11-6.HID0 Checkstop Control Bits ...............................................................................................361
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Table 11-7.HID2 Checkstop Control Bits ................................................................................................362
Table 11-8.L2CR Checkstop Control Bits ...............................................................................................362
List of Tables
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About This Manual
This user’s manual defines the functionality of the PowerPC® 750GX and 750GL RISC microprocessors. It
describes features of the 750GX and 750GL that are not defined by the architecture. This book is intended as
a companion to the PowerPC Microprocessor Family: The Programming Environments (referred to as The Programming Environments Manual).
Note: Soft copies of the latest version of this manual and documents referred to in this manual that are produced by IBM can be accessed on the world wide web as follows: http://www-3.ibm.com/chips/techlib.
Note: All information contained in this document referring to the PowerPC 750GX RISC Microprocessor also
pertains to the IBM PowerPC 750GL RISC Microprocessor.
Who Should Read This Manual
This manual is intended for system software developers, hardware developers, and applications programmers designing products for the 750GX. Readers should understand operating systems, microprocessor
system design, basic principles of RISC processing, and details of the PowerPC Architecture™.
Related Publications
PowerPC Architecture
• May, Cathy, et. al., eds. The PowerPC Architecture: A Specification for a New Family of RISC Processors, Second Edition. San Francisco, CA: Morgan-Kaufmann, 1994.
• McClanahan, Kip. PowerPC Programming for Intel Programmers. Foster City, CA: Hungry Minds, 1995.
• Shanley, Tom. PowerPC System Architecture, Second Edition. Richardson, TX: Addison-Wesley, 1995.
PowerPC Microprocessor Documen tat ion
The latest version of this manual, errata, and other IBM documents referred to in this manual can be found at:
http://www.ibm.com/chips/techlib
• PowerPC 750GX RISC Microprocessor Datasheet. Provides data about bus timing, signal behavior, electrical and thermal characteristics, and other design considerations for each PowerPC implementation.
• PowerPC Microprocessor Family: The Programming EnvironmentsManual (G522-029 0-01). Prov id es
information about resources defined by the PowerPC Architecture that are common to PowerPC processors.
• Implementation Variances Relative to Rev. 1 of The Programming Environments Manual.
• PowerPC Microprocessor Family: The Programmer’s Pocket Reference Guide (SA14-2093-00). This
foldout card provides an overview of the PowerPC registers, instructions, and exceptions for 32-bit implementations.
.
• PowerPC Microprocessor Family: The Programmer’s Reference Guide (MPRPPCPRG-01). Includes the
register summary, memory control model, exception vectors, and the PowerPC instruction set.
• Application notes. These short documents contain information about specific design issues useful to programmers and engineers working with PowerPC processors.
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0 0 0 0
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Conventions Used in This Manual
Notational Conventions
mnemonicsInstruction mnemonics are shown in lowercase bold.
italicsItalics in dicate va riable co mmand para meters. F or exam ple: bcctrx. Book titles in text are
set in italics.
0x0Prefix to denote a hexadecimal number.
0b0Prefix to denote a binary number.
crfDInstruction syntax used to identify a destination Condition Register (CR) field.
rA, rBInstruction syntax used to identify a source General Purpose Register (GPR).
rDInstruction syntax used to identify a destination GPR.
frA, frB, frCInstruction syntax used to identify a source Floating Point Register (FPR).
frDInstruction syntax used to identify a destination FPR.
REG[FIELD]Abbreviations or acronyms for registers are shown in uppercase text. Specific bits, fields,
or ranges appear in brackets. For example, MSR[LE] refers to the little-endian mode
enable bit in the Machine State Register.
xIn certain contexts, such as a signal encoding, this indicates a don’t care.
nUsed to express an undefined numerical value.
¬
NOT logical operator.
&AND logical operator.
| OR logical operator.
Indicates reserved bits or bit fields in a register. Although these bits can be written to as
either ones or zeros, they are always read as zeros.
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Terminology Conventions
The following table describes terminology conventions used in this manual and the equivalent terminology
used in the PowerPC Architecture specification.
Problem mode (or problem state) User-level privilege
Real address Physical address
Relocation Translation
Storage (locations) Memory
Storage (the act of) Access
Store in Write back
Store through Write through
Instruction Field Conventions
The following table describes instruction field conventions used in this manual and the equivalent conventions
from the PowerPC Architecture specification.
Using This Manual with the Programming Environments Manual
Because the PowerPC Architecture is designed to be flexible to support a broad range of processors, the
PowerPC Microprocessor Family: The Programming Environments Manual provides a general description of
features that are common to PowerPC processors and indicates those features that are optional or that might
be implemented differently in the design of each processor.
This document and The Programming Environments Manual describe three levels, or programming environments, of the PowerPC Architecture:
• PowerPC user instruction set architecture (UISA)—The UISA defines the level of the architecture to
which user-level software should conform. The UISA defines the base user-level instruction set, userlevel registers, data types, memory conventions, and the memory and programming models seen by
application programmers.
• PowerPC virtual environment architecture (VEA)—The VEA, which is the smallest component of the
PowerPC Architecture, defines additional user-level functionality that falls outside typical user-level software requirements. The VEA describes the memory model for an environment in which multiple processors or other devices can access external memory and defines aspects of the cache model and cachecontrol instructions from a user-level perspective. The resources defined by the VEA are particularly useful for opti mizi ng m emo ry ac cess es and f or ma nag ing reso urce s in an en vir onm ent i n wh ich other pr oces sors and other devices can access external memory.
Implementations that conform to the PowerPC VEA also conform to the PowerPC UISA, but might not
necessarily adhere to the OEA.
• PowerPC operating environment architecture (OEA)—The OEA defines supervisor-level resources typically required by an operating system. The OEA defines the PowerPC memory-management model,
supervisor-level registers, and the exception model.
Implementations that conform to the PowerPC OEA also conform to the PowerPC UISA and VEA.
Some resources are defined more generally at one level in the architecture and more specifically at another.
For example, conditions that cause a floating-point exception are defined by the UISA, while the exception
mechanism itself is defined by the OEA.
Because it is important to distinguish between the levels of the architecture in order to ensure compatibility
across multiple platforms, those distinctions are shown clearly throughout this book.
For ease in reference, the arrangement of topics in this book follows that of The Programming Environments Manual. Topics build upon one another, beginning with a description and complete summary of 750GXspecific registers and instructions and progressing to more specialized topics such as 750GX-specific details
regarding the cache, exception, and memory-management models. Therefore, chapters can include information from multiple levels of the architecture. (For example, the discussion of the cache model uses information
from both the VEA and the OEA.)
The PowerPC Architecture: A Specification for a New Family of RISC Processors defines the architecture
from the perspective of the three programming environments and remains the defining document for the
PowerPC Architecture. For information about PowerPC documentation, see Related Publications on
page 19.
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1. PowerPC 750GX Overview
The IBM PowerPC 750GX reduced instruction set computer (RISC) Microprocessor is an implementation of
the PowerPC Architecture™ with enhancements based on the IBM PowerPC 750™, 750CXe, and 750FX
RISC microprocessor designs. This chapter provides an overview of the PowerPC 750GX microprocessor
features, including a block diagram that shows the major functional components. It also describes how the
750GX implementation complies with the PowerPC Architecture definition.
Note: In this document, the IBM PowerPC 750GX RISC Microprocessor is abbreviated as 750GX or 750GX
RISC Microprocessor.
1.1 750GX Microprocessor Overview
The 750GX is a 32-bit implementation of the PowerPC Architecture in a 0.13 micron CMOS technology with
six levels of copper interconnect. The 750GX is designed for high performance and low power consumption.
It provides a superset of functionality to the PowerPC 750 processor, including a complete 60x bus interface,
and enhancements such as an integrated 1-MB L2 cache.
750GX implements the 32-bit portion of the PowerPC Architecture, which provides 32-bit effective addresses,
integer data types of 8, 16, and 32 bits, and floating-point data types of single and double-precision. 750GX is
a superscalar processor that can complete two instructions simultaneously.
It incorporates the following six execution units:
• Floating-point unit (FPU)
• Branch processing unit (BPU)
• System register unit (SRU)
• Load/store unit (LSU)
• Two integer units (IUs): IU1 executes all integer instructions. IU2 executes all integer instructions except
multiply and divide instructions.
The ability to execute several instructions in parallel and the use of simple instructions with rapid execution
times yield high efficiency and throughput for 750GX-based systems. Most integer instructions execute in one
clock cycle. The FPU is pipelined; it breaks the tasks it performs into subtasks, and then executes in three
successive stages. Typically, a floating-point instruction can occupy only one of the three stages at a time,
freeing the previous stage to work on the next floating-point instruction. Thus, three single-precision floatingpoint instructions can be in the FPU execute stage at a time. Double-precision add instructions have a 3-cycle
latency; double-precision multiply and multiply/add instructions have a 4-cycle latency.
Figure 1-1, 750GX Microprocessor Block Diagram, on page 25 shows the parallel organization of the execution units (shaded in the diagram). The instruction unit fetches, dispatches, and predicts branch instructions.
Note that this is a conceptual model that shows basic features rather than attempting to show how features
are implemented physically.
750GX has independent on-chip, 32-KB, 8-way set-associative, physically addressed caches for instructions
and data, and independent instruction and data memory management units (MMUs). Each memory management unit has a 128-entry, 2-way set-associative translation lookaside buffer (DTLB and ITLB) that saves
recently used page-address translations. Block-address translation is done through the 8-entry instruction
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and data block-address-translation (IBAT and DBAT) arrays, defined by the PowerPC Architecture. During
block translation, effective addresses are compared simultaneously with all eight block-address-translation
(BAT) entries.
For information about the L1 cache, see Chapter 3, Instruction-Cache and Data-Cache Operation, on
page 121. The L2 cache is implemented with an on-chip, 4-way set-associative tag memory, and an on-chip
1-MB SRAM with error correction code (ECC) protection for data storage. For more information on the L2
Cache, see Chapter 9 on page 323.
The 750GX has a 32-bit address bus and a 64-bit data bus. Multiple devices compete for system resources
through a central external arbiter. The 750GX’s 3-state cache-coherency protocol (MEI) supports the modified, exclusive, and invalid states, a compatible subset of the MESI (modified/exclusive/shared/invalid)
4-state protocol, and it operates coherently in systems with 4-state caches. The 750GX supports single-beat
and burst data transfers for external memory accesses and memory-mapped I/O operations. The system
interface is described in Chapter 7, Signal Descriptions, on page 249 and Chapter 8, Bus Interface Opera-tion, on page 279.
The 750GX has four software-controllable power-saving modes. The three static modes; doze, nap, and
sleep; progressively reduce power dissipation. When functional units are idle, a dynamic power management
mode causes those units to enter a low-power mode automatically without affecting operational performance,
software execution, or external hardware. The 750GX also provides a thermal assist unit (TAU) and a way to
reduce the instruction fetch rate to limit power dissipation. Power management is described in Chapter 10, Power and Thermal Management, on page 335.
PowerPC 750GX Overview
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Figure 1-1. 750GX Microprocessor Block Diagram
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IBM PowerPC 750GX and 750GL RISC Microproces sor
Additional Features:
Reservation Stat io n
Integer Unit 1
+ x ÷
Completion Unit
Reorder Buffer
(6 Entry)
• Time Base Cntr/
Decrementer
• Clock Multiplier
• JTAG/COP Interface
• Thermal/Power
Management
• Performance Monitor
2 Instructions
Reservation Station Reservation Station
Integer Unit 2
+
32-Bit
60x Bus
System Reg ister
Data MMU
SRs
(Original)
DTLB
Ifetch
Instruction Queue
(6 Words)
Unit
32-Bit
DBAT
Array
Instruction Control Unit
Dispatch Unit
GPR File
Rename Buffers
(6)
PA
EA
Tags
32-KB
D Cache
256-Bit
Branch Processing
Unit
BTIC
64 Entries
BHT
Interrupt Logic
64-Bit
(2 Instructions)
Reservation Station
Load/Store Unit
32-Bit
(EA Calculation)
Store Queue
64-Bit
256-Bit
32-Bit Address Bus
64-Bit Data Bus
CTR
LR
CR
(2 Entry)
64-Bit
+
60x Bus Interface Unit
Instruction Fetch Queue
L1 Castout Queue
Data Load Queue
Instruction MMU
SRs
(Shadow)
ITLB
FPR File
Rename Buffers
(6)
64-Bit
IBAT
Array
Reservation Station
64-Bit
L2 Cache
L2CR
L2 Tag
1 MB
SRAM
(4 Instructions)
Tags
(2 Entry)
Floating-Point
Unit
+ x ÷
FPSCR
FPSCR
128-Bit
64-Bit
32-KB
I Cache
1.2 750GX Microprocessor Features
This section lists features of the 750GX. The interrelationship of these features is shown in Figure 1-1 on
page 25.
Major features of 750GX are:
• High-performance, su pers cal ar mic rop roc es sor.
– As many as four instructions can be fetched from the instruction cache per clock cycle.
– As many as two instructions can be dispatched and completed per clock.
– As many as six instructions can execute per clock (including two integer instructions).
– Single-clock-cycle executi on for most instructions.
• Six independent execution units and two register files.
– BPU featuring both static and dynamic branch prediction.
• 64-entry (16-set, 4-way set-associative) branch target instruction cache (BTIC), a cache of
branch instructions that have been encountered in branch/loop code sequences. If a target
instruction is in the BTIC, it is fetched into the instruction queue a cycle sooner than it can be
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made available from the instruction cache. Typically, if a fetch access hits the BTIC, it provides
the first two instructions in the target stream effectively yielding a zero-cycle branch.
• 512-entry branch history table (BHT) with two bits per entry for four levels of prediction—nottaken, strongly not-taken, taken, strongly taken.
• Removal of Branch instructions that do not update the Count Register (CTR) or Link Register
(LR) from the instruction stream.
– Two integer units (IUs) that share 32 general purpose registers (GPRs) for integer operands.
• IU1 can execute any integer instruction.
• IU2 can execute all integer instructions except multiply and divide instructions (multiply, divide,
shift, rotate, arithmetic, and logical instructions). Most instructions that execute in the IU2 take
one cycle to execute. The IU2 has a single-entry reservation station.
– 3-stage floating-point unit (FPU).
• FPU fully compliant with IEEE
®
754-1985 for both single-precision and double-precision opera-
tions.
• Support for non-IEEE mode for time-critical operations.
• Hardware support for denormalized numbers.
• Hardware support for divide.
• 2-entry reservation station.
• Thirty-two 64-bit Floating Point Registers (FPRs) for single and double-precision operations.
• Performs alignment and precision conversion for floating-point data.
• Performs alignment and sign extension for integer data.
• 3-entry store queue.
• Supports both big-endian and little-endian modes.
– System register unit (SRU) handles miscellaneous instructions.
• Executes Condition Register (CR) logical and Move-to/Move-from SPR instructions (mtspr and
mfspr).
• Single-entry reservation station.
• Rename buffers.
– Six GPR rename buffers.
– Six FPR rename buffers.
– Condition Register buffering supports two CR writes per clock.
• Completion unit.
– The completion unit retires an instruction from the 6-entry reorder buffer (completion queue) when all
instructions ahead of it have been completed, the instruction has finished execution, and no excep-
tions are pending.
– Guarantees a sequential programming model and a precise-exception model.
– Monitors all dispatched instructions and retires them in order.
– Tracks unresolved branches and flushes instructions from the mispredicted branch path.
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– Retires as many as two instructions per clock.
• Separate on-chip L1 instruction and data caches (Harvard architecture).
– 32-KB, 8-way set-associative instruction and data caches.
– Pseudo least-recently-used (PLRU) replacement algorithm.
– 32-byte (8-word) cache block.
– Physically indexed/physical tags.
Note: The PowerPC Architecture refers to physical address space as real address space.
– Cache write-back or write-through operation programmable on a virtual-page or BAT-block basis.
– Instruction cache can provide four instructions per clock; data cache can provide two words per clock
– Caches can be disabled in software.
– Caches can be locked in software.
– Data-cache coherency (MEI) maintained in hardware.
– The critical double word is made available to the requesting unit when it is read into the line-fill buffer.
The cache is nonblocking, so it can be accessed during block reload.
– Nonblocking instruction cache (one outstanding miss).
– Nonblocking data cache (four outstanding misses).
– No snooping of instruction cache.
– Parity for L1 tags and cach es.
• Integrated L2 cache.
– 1-MB on-chip ECC SRAMs.
– On-chip 4-way set-associative tag memory.
– ECC error correction for most single-bit errors; detection of remaining single-bit errors and all double-
bit errors.
– Copy-back or write-through data cache on a page basis, or for entire L2.
– 64-byte line size, two sectors per line.
– L2 frequency at core speed.
– On-board ECC; parity for L2 tags.
– Supports up to four outstanding misses (three data and one instruction or four data).
– Cache locking by way.
• Separate memory management units (MMUs) for instructions and data.
– 52-bit virtual address; 32-b it phy si cal address.
– Address translation for virtual pages or variable-sized BAT blocks.
– Memory programmable as write-back or write-through, cacheable or noncacheable, and coherency
enforced or coherency not enforced on a virtual-page or BAT block basis.
– Separate IBAT and DBAT arrays (eight each) for instructions and data, respectively.
– Separate virtual instruction and data translation lookaside buffers (TLBs).
• Both TLBs are 128-entry, 2-way set associative, and use an LRU replacement algorithm.
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• TLBs are hardware-reloadable (the page table search is performed by hardware).
• Bus interface features:
– Enhanced 60x bus that pipelines back-to-back reads to a depth of four. A dedicated snoop queue that
allows snoop copybacks to also pipeline with up to the four maximum reads. Enveloped write transactions supported with the asserti on of DBWO
.
– Selectable bus-to-core clock frequency ratios of 2x, 2.5x, 3x, 3.5x, 4x, 4.5x, 5x, 5.5x, 6x, 6.5x, 7x,
3x, and 3.5x not supported with bus pipelining enabled).
– A 64-bit, split-transaction external data bus with burst transfers.
– Support for address pipelining and limited out-of-order bus transactions.
– 8-word reload buffer for the L1 data cache.
– Single-entry instruction fetch queue.
– 2-entry L2 cache castout queue.
–No-DRTRY
mode eliminates the DRTRY signal from the qualified bus grant. This allows the forwarding of data during load operations to the internal core one bus cycle sooner than if the use of DRTRY
is enabled.
– Selectable I/O interface voltages of 1.8 V, 2.5 V, or 3.3 V
• Multiprocessing support features:
– Hardware-enforced, 3-state cache-coherency protocol (MEI) for data cache.
– Load/store with reservation instruction pair for atomic memory references, semaphores, and other
multiprocessor operations.
• Power and thermal management:
– Three static modes, doze, nap, and sleep, progressively reduce power dissipation:
• Doze—All the functional units are disabled except for the Time Base/Decrementer Registers and
the bus snooping logic.
• Nap—The nap mode further reduces power consumption by disabling bus snooping, leaving only
the Time Base Register and the PLL in a powered state.
• Sleep—All internal functional units are disabled, after which external system logic can disable the
PLL and SYSCLK.
– Software-controllable thermal management. Thermal management is performed through the use of
three supervisor-level registers and a 750GX-specific thermal-management exception.
– Software-controlled frequency switching (dual PLL mode) to allow toggling between minimum and
maximum frequencies to manage power consumption based on computational load.
– Instruction-cache throttling provides control to slow instruction fetching to limit power consumption.
• Hardware-assist features for fault-tolerant systems including L2 ECC correction, parity checking on internal arrays, and dual-processor lockstep operation.
• Performance monitor can be used to help debug system designs and improve software efficiency.
• In-system testability and debugging features through Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) boundary-scan
capability.
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1.2.1 Instruction Flow
As shown in Figure 1-1, 750GX Microprocessor Block Diagram, on page 25, the 750GX instruction control
unit provides centralized control of instruction flow to the execution units. The instruction unit contains a
sequential instruction fetch (Ifetch), 6-entry instruction queue (IQ), dispatch unit, and BPU. It determines the
address of the next instruction to be fetched based on information from the sequential instruction fetcher and
from the BPU. See Chapt er 6, I nst ru cti on Timing, on page 209 for more information.
The sequential instruction fetcher loads instructions from the instruction cache into the instruction queue. The
BPU extracts branch instructions from the sequential instruction fetcher. Branch instructions that cannot be
resolved immediately are predicted using either 750GX-specific dynamic branch prediction or the architecture-defined static branch prediction.
Branch instructions that do not update the LR or CTR are removed from (folded out of) the instruction stream.
Instruction fetching continues along the predicted path of the branch instruction.
Instructions issued to execution units beyond a predicted branch can be executed but are not retired until the
branch is resolved. If branch prediction is incorrect, the completion unit flushes all instructions fetched on the
predicted path, and instruction fetching resumes along the correct path.
1.2.1.1 Instruction Queue and Dispatch Unit
The instruction queue (IQ), shown in Figure 1-1 on page 25, holds as many as six instructions and loads up to
four instructions from the instruction cache during a single-processor clock cycle. The instruction fetcher
continuously attempts to load as many instructions as there were vacancies created in the IQ in the previous
clock cycle. All instructions except branches are dispatched to their respective execution units from the
bottom two positions in the instruction queue (IQ0 and IQ1) at a maximum rate of two instructions per cycle.
Reservation stations are provided for the IU1, IU2, FPU, LSU, and SRU for dispatched instructions. The
dispatch unit checks for source and destination register dependencies, allocates rename buffers, determines
whether a position is available in the completion queue, and inhibits subsequent instruction dispatching if
these resources are not available.
Branch instructions can be detected, decoded, and predicted from anywhere in the instruction queue. For a
more detailed discussion of instruction dispatch, see Section 6.6.1, Branch, Dispatch, and Completion-Unit Resource Requirements, on page 237.
1.2.1.2 Branch Processing Unit (BPU)
The BPU receives branch instructions from the sequential instruction fetcher and performs CR lookahead
operations on conditional branches to resolve them early, achieving the effect of a zero-cycle branch in many
cases.
Unconditional branch instructions and conditional branch instructions in which the condition is known can be
resolved immediately. For unresolved conditional branch instructions, the branch path is predicted using
either the architecture-defined static branch prediction or 750GX-specific dynamic branch prediction.
Dynamic branch prediction is enabled if the BHT bit in Hardware-Implementation-Dependent Register 0 is set
(HID0[BHT] = 1).
When a prediction is made, instruction fetching, dispatching, and execution continue along the predicted
path, but instructions cannot be retired and write results back to architected registers until the prediction is
determined to be correct (resolved). When a prediction is incorrect, the instructions from the incorrect path
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are flushed from the processor, and instruction fetching resumes along the correct path. The 750GX allows a
second branch instruction to be predicted; instructions from the second predicted branch instruction stream
can be fetched but cannot be dispatched. These instructions are held in the instruction queue.
Dynamic prediction is implemented using a 512-entry BHT. The BHT is a cache that provides two bits per
entry that together indicate four levels of prediction for a branch instruction—not-taken, strongly not-taken,
taken, strongly taken. When dynamic branch prediction is disabled, the BPU uses a bit in the instruction
encoding to predict the direction of the conditional branch. Therefore, when an unresolved conditional branch
instruction is encountered, the 750GX executes instructions from the predicted path although the results are
not committed to architected registers until the conditional branch is resolved. This execution can continue
until a second unresolved branch instruction is encountered.
When a branch is taken (or predicted as taken), the instructions from the untaken path must be flushed, and
the target instruction stream must be fetched into the IQ. The BTIC is a 64-entry cache that contains the most
recently used branch target instructions, typically in pairs. When an instruction fetch hits in the BTIC, the
instructions arrive in the instruction queue in the next clock cycle, a clock cycle sooner than they would arrive
from the instruction cache. Additional instructions arrive from the instruction cache in the next clock cycle.
The BTIC reduces the number of missed opportunities to dispatch instructions and gives the processor a
1-cycle head start on processing the target stream. With the use of the BTIC, the 750GX achieves a zerocycle delay for branches taken. Coherency of the BTIC table is maintained by table reset on an instructioncache flash invalidate, Instruction Cache Block Invalidate (icbi) or Return from Interrupt (rfi) instruction
execution, or when an exception is taken.
The BPU contains an adder to compute branch target addresses and three user-control registers—the Link
Register (LR), the Count Register (CTR), and the CR. The BPU calculates the return pointer for subroutine
calls and saves it into the LR for certain types of branch instructions. The LR also contains the branch target
address for the Branch Conditional to Link Register (bclrx) instruction. The CTR contains the branch target
address for the Branch Conditional to Count Register (bcctrx) instruction. Because the LR and CTR are
special purpose registers (SPRs), their contents can be copied to or from any GPR. Since the BPU uses dedicated registers rather than GPRs or FPRs, execution of branch instructions is largely independent from
execution of fixed-point and floating-point instructions.
1.2.1.3 Completion Unit
The completion unit operates closely with the dispatch unit. Instructions are fetched and dispatched in
program order. At the point of dispatch, the program order is maintained by assigning each dispatched
instruction a successive entry in the 6-entry completion queue. The completion unit tracks instructions from
dispatch through execution and retires them in program order from the two bottom entries in the completion
queue (CQ0 and CQ1).
Instructions cannot be dispatched to an execution unit unless there is a vacancy in the completion queue and
rename buffers are available. Branch instructions that do not update the CTR or LR are removed from the
instruction stream and do not occupy a space in the completion queue. Instructions that update the CTR and
LR follow the same dispatch and completion procedures as nonbranch instructions, except that they are not
issued to an execution unit.
An instruction is retired when it is removed from the completion queue and its results are written to architected registers (GPRs, FPRs, LR, and CTR) from the rename buffers. In-order completion ensures program
integrity and the correct architectural state when the 750GX must recover from a mispredicted branch or any
exception. Also, the rename buffers assigned to it by the dispatch unit are returned to the available rename
buffer pool. These rename buffers are reused by the dispatch unit as subsequent instructions are dispatched.
PowerPC 750GX Overview
Page 30 of 377
gx_01.fm.(1.2)
March 27,2006
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