Patent ID: 6467037
Filing Date: 2002-10-15
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
A method of executing instructions, comprising:maintaining a program counter that specifies a current instruction in a instruction section for execution, the instruction section being a part of a computer memory; maintaining a data counter that specifies a data location in a data section associated with current data used by the current instruction, wherein each data location includes data values, and further wherein at least some of the data values are of different lengths, the data section being included in the computer memory, wherein the data counter and the program counter can be incremented separately based upon whether or not the current instruction retrieved and used the current data; executing the current instruction specified by the program counter; determining if the current data at the data location specified by the data counter was retrieved and used during the execution of the current instruction specified by the program counter; incrementing the program counter so as to specify a next instruction; and incrementing the data counter to a next data location as determined by the length of the data value used if the current data was retrieved and used during the execution of the current instruction.