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2–10
Internal Architecture
29 September 1997 – Subject To Change
21164PC Microarchitecture
The floating-point divide unit is associated with the floating-point add pipeline
but is not pipelined.
The FPU can accept two instructions every cycle, with the exception of floating-
point divide instructions. The result latency for nondivide, floating-point instructions
is four cycles.
The floating-point register file (FRF) has five read ports and four write ports. Four of
the read ports are used by the two pipelines to source operands. The remaining read
port is used by floating-point stores. Two of the write ports are used to write results
from the two pipelines. The other two write ports are used to write fills from float-
ing-point loads.
2.1.4 Memory Address Translation Unit
The memory address translation unit (MTU) contains three major sections:
•
Data translation buffer (dual ported)
•
Miss address file
•
Write buffer address file
The MTU receives up to two virtual addresses every cycle from the IEU. The trans-
lation buffer generates the corresponding physical addresses and access control
information for each virtual address. The 21164PC implements a 43-bit virtual
address, a 40-bit noncacheable physical address, and a 33-bit cacheable physical
address. Cacheable addresses consist of bits <32:0> when bit <39> = 0. Physical
addresses that set bits <38:33> are not supported by the 21164PC. These addresses
are not checked by the 21164PC and could result in erroneous data.
2.1.4.1 Data Translation Buffer
The 64-entry, fully associative, dual-read-ported data translation buffer (DTB) stores
recently used data stream (Dstream) page table entries (PTEs). Each entry supports
all four granularity hint-bit combinations, so that a single DTB entry can provide
translation for up to 512 contiguously mapped, 8KB pages. The translation buffer
uses a not-last-used replacement algorithm.
For load and store instructions, and other MTU instructions requiring address trans-
lation, the effective 43-bit virtual address is presented to the DTB. If the PTE of the
supplied virtual address is cached in the DTB, the page frame number (PFN) and
protection bits for the page that contains the address are used by the MTU to com-
plete the address translation and access checks.