One or more aspects relate, in general, to processing within a processing environment, and in particular, to optimizing the processing.
Processors execute instructions that direct the processors to perform specific operations. The instructions may be part of user applications that perform user-defined tasks, or part of operating system applications that perform system level services, as examples.
One processing technique used by the processors to process the instructions is referred to as pipelined processing, in which processing is performed in stages. Example stages include a fetch stage in which the processor fetches an instruction from memory; a decode stage in which the fetched instruction is decoded; an execute stage in which the decoded instruction is executed; and a complete stage in which execution of the instruction is completed, including updating architectural state relating to the processing. Other and/or different stages are possible.
To facilitate processing within a pipelined processor, various optimization techniques are employed. One such technique includes decode time instruction optimization, which offers an opportunity to improve code execution by combining multiple instructions into a single internal instruction; recombining multiple instructions into multiple/fewer internal instructions; and/or recombining multiple instructions into multiple internal instructions with fewer data dependencies.