Operation
The scheduler in a Pentium 4 processor is so aggressive that it will send operations for execution without a guarantee that they can be successfully executed. (Among other things, the scheduler assumes all data is in level 1 CPU cache.) The most common reason execution fails is that the requisite data is not available, which itself is most likely due to a cache miss. When this happens, the replay system springs into action. The replay system signals the scheduler to stop, and then repeatedly executes the failed string of dependent operations until they have completed successfully.
Read more about this topic: Replay System
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“You may read any quantity of books, and you may almost as ignorant as you were at starting, if you don’t have, at the back of your minds, the change for words in definite images which can only be acquired through the operation of your observing faculties on the phenomena of nature.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“It is critical vision alone which can mitigate the unimpeded operation of the automatic.”
—Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)