APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR INDEPENDENTLY SCHEDULABLE FUNCTIONAL UNITS WITH ISSUE LOCK MECHANISM IN A PROCESSOR

A functional unit of a processor may be configured to operate on instructions as either a single, wide functional unit or as multiple, independent narrower units. For example, an execution unit may be scheduled to execute an instruction as a single double-wide execution unit or as two independently schedulable single-wide execution units. Functional unit portions may be independently schedulable for execution of instructions operating on a first data type (e.g. SISD instructions). For single-wide instructions, functional unit portions may be scheduled independently. An issue lock mechanism may lock functional unit portions together so that they form a single multi-wide functional unit. For certain multi-wide instructions (e.g. certain SIMD instructions), an instruction operating on a multi-wide or vector data type may be scheduled so that the full multi-wide operation is performed concurrently by functional unit portions locked together as a one wide functional unit.