Patent ID: 8117423

Claim:
A method comprising: if an execution unit associated with an instruction pipeline detects a multi-cycle atom of a very long instruction word (VLIW) molecule in a stage of the instruction pipeline, receiving a stall signal and a multi-cycle request signal from the execution unit; in response to the stall signal, stalling pipelining operation of the instruction pipeline, reading an instruction address from a corresponding stage of an address pipeline, and storing the instruction address; in response to the multi-cycle request signal, determining whether to permit execution of the multi-cycle atom, wherein an exception and an interrupt take precedence over execution of the multi-cycle atom; and if execution of the multi-cycle atom is permitted, updating control information associated with the multi-cycle atom to indicate a multi-cycle operation and generating an interrupt mask signal to indicate that interrupts should not disrupt execution of the multi-cycle atom.