Dynamic configuration steering for a reconfigurable superscalar processor

A new dynamic vector approach for the selection and management of the configuration of a reconfigurable superscalar processor is proposed. This new method improves on previous work that used steering vectors to guide the selection of functional units to be loaded into the processor. Dependencies among instructions in the instruction buffer are analyzed to enable a new scoring method. The dynamic vector technique is shown to reduce the amount of reconfiguration required while preserving execution resources. Simulation results reveal that, given enough configurable space, the configuration of the processor approaches a stable state.