Patent ID: 7434028

Claim:
A method, comprising: determining a new value to be pushed onto a hardware stack having a first entry associated with a current top of stack pointer, the first entry including a data portion and an associated counter; if the new value equals the data portion of the first entry, incrementing the associated counter of the first entry to equate to a number of times the new value has been repeated, wherein the current top of stack pointer is not incremented; if the new value does not equal the data portion associated with the first entry, storing the new value in the data portion of a next entry and incrementing the current top of stack pointer, wherein the new value is selected from a set of n potential values, and wherein the data portion is n bits wide; and determining that the new value to be to be pushed onto the hardware stack equals a prior value already pushed onto the hardware stack, wherein the new value cannot be pushed onto the hardware stack if the new value equals a prior value pushed onto the hardware stack other than the value stored in the data portion associated with the current top of stack pointer.