Oracle Corporation
Hardware mechanism to mitigate stalling of a processor core

Abstract:

An apparatus includes an execution unit, an instruction queue, and a control circuit. The control circuit may be configured to activate a plurality of processor threads. Each of the plurality of processor threads may include a respective plurality of instructions. The instruction queue may be configured to issue at least one instruction included in the plurality of processor threads to the execution unit at a first rate. The control circuit may also be configured to track, for a particular processor thread, a period of time from activating the particular processor thread. The instruction queue may be further configured to limit issue of a next instruction for at least one other processor thread to a second rate, based on a comparison of the period of time to a threshold amount of time. The second rate may be lower than the first rate.