Patent ID: 7577824

Claim:
A very long instruction word (VLIW) memory system comprising: a VLIW memory having a plurality of instruction slots configured for storing VLIWs, each VLIW stored at an addressable location in the VLIW memory, with VLJWs being fetched from their addressable locations in the VLIW memory for decoding and execution; said plurality of instruction slots comprising standard width instruction slots wherein the standard width instruction slots store standard width instructions and at least one expanded width instruction slot having a width that is greater than the standard width instruction slots, wherein the expanded width instruction slot stores an expanded width instruction having a format that is wider than the standard width instructions and the expanded width instruction has a single opcode of contiguous bits; and the VLIW memory configured for loading said at least one expanded width instruction slot with the expanded width instruction accessed from a local data memory separate from the VLIW memory.