VLIW PROCESSOR WITH LESS INSTRUCTION ISSUE SLOTS THAN FUNCTIONAL UNITS

A VLIW processor has less instruction issue slots than functional units. Operands and results for the operations specified by the instruction issue register are stored in a multiport register file. The multiport register file has numbers of read and write ports which are tied to the number of instruction issue slots rather than to the number of functional units. A write control unit controls transfer of results from functional units to the multiport register file to take into account instruction latency.