Reply To: Execution

I was wondering about what happens to FUs that are occupied at the time of a call. Do they complete while the call is executing and simply output their value to an output buffer for the slot (potentially to get saved and restored by the spiller) or is their internal execution state saved and restored?

Suppose you have a mul and a call in the same instruction and that the mul take 3 cycles. With phasing the mul will have completed 1 cycle’s worth of work prior to the call. Will the mul complete its work (in two more cycles) during the called function’s cycles or would its work be stopped and its internal state be saved (again, to the spiller?) and then restored on return? If the mul completes during the called function then it could show up in the caller’s belt prematurely (unless that’s handled by a naming scheme?). If the state is saved and restored, then potentially more information would need to be spilled and filled and the mechanism for doing such a thing must be costly in complexity (wires, area, power, etc.).