Patent ID: 6289446
Filing Date: 2001-09-11
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
A data processing system responsive to instructions in program code to execute a process and the instructions including call points between caller and called instructions and instructions for maintaining a stack, and the data processing system comprising:instruction fetch logic which fetches the instructions in the program code to provide a sequence of instructions in response to an instruction pointer, the instructions further including first jump instructions with a jump address and second jump instructions with a jump address together with context information for a portion of the stack associated with the corresponding call point;instruction decode logic, coupled to the instruction fetch logic, which decodes a current instruction in the sequence for execution, and including logic to detect the first and second jump instructions and to skip decoding the context information of the second jump instructions;execution resources, coupled to the instruction decode logic, which execute the decoded instructions;logic, coupled with the instruction fetch logic, which updates the instruction pointer; andan exception manager to handle exceptions generated by execution of the corresponding called function by accessing the context information of at least an associated one of the second jump instructions to unwind the stack.