Patent ID: 7454600
Filing Date: 2008-11-18
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A method of assigning thread priority comprising: assigning priority to a first thread in a multi threaded processor; and assigning priority to a second thread in response to one of a plurality of conditions being true, the conditions consisting of if a thread precedence counter expires; if processing of said first thread retires an instruction from said first thread; and if there is not an indication of approaching instruction side starvation for said first thread wherein instruction fetching for said first thread would be blocked due to processing one or more instructions from another thread, and wherein said indication of approaching instruction side starvation for said first thread includes each of a plurality of conditions being true, the plurality of conditions including each of the following if the processor is operating in a multithreaded processing mode; if the first thread has no instructions in an execution pipeline of said processor; and if the first thread is attempting to fetch instructions from a memory.