18969134. Processor Supporting Position-Independent Addressing (Oracle International Corporation)
Processor Supporting Position-Independent Addressing
Organization Name
Oracle International Corporation
Inventor(s)
Mario Wolczko of San Carlos CA US
Processor Supporting Position-Independent Addressing
This abstract first appeared for US patent application 18969134 titled 'Processor Supporting Position-Independent Addressing
Original Abstract Submitted
A processor may implement position-independent memory addressing by providing load and store instructions that include position-independent addressing modes. A memory address may contain a normalized pointer, where the memory address stores a normalized memory address that, when added to an offset previously determined for the memory address, defines another memory address. The position-independent addressing mode may also support invalid memory addresses using a reserved value, where a load instruction providing the position-independent addressing mode may return a NULL value or generate an exception when determining that the stored normalized memory address is equal to the reserved value and where a store instruction providing the position-independent addressing mode may store the reserved value when determining that the memory address is an invalid or NULL memory address.