Patent ID: 7194603

Claim:
A method for selecting among a plurality of flush requests from multiple instruction threads in a simultaneous multithread (SMT) processor with a shared group completion table (GCT) comprising the steps of: receiving instruction group identifiers (Gtags) and flush next bits corresponding to each of said plurality of flush requests; coupling said Gtags as inputs to said GCT and retrieving any forward link Gtags (FGtags) for each Gtag; selecting said Gtags or FGtags as selected Gtags and FGtags in response to logic states of said flush next bits; coupling said selected Gtags and FGtags to a flush array; saving said selected Gtags and FGtags in a storage unit with source identifiers; and flushing either a Gtag group corresponding to a single match or a highest priority Gtag group if more than one match is found and take an action based on its corresponding source identification.