METHOD FOR TRACKING PIPELINE RESOURCES IN A SUPERSCALAR PROCESSOR

A method and apparatus for tracking pipeline resources of a processor involves fetching selected ones of the coded instructions and marking the fetched instructions with instruction metadata. The instruction metadata indicates a number of pipeline resources required by each instruction. The marked instructions are issued from the fetch unit and, using the instruction metadata, a count of a number of resources committed to issued instructions in the execution pipelines is maintained. When it is determined that the number of resources committed to issued instructions exceeds a preselected maximum and instructions are prevented from issuing from the fetch unit. As each instruction is retired, the instruction metadata is used to determine a number of resources released by retirement of the issued instruction.