SPECULATIVE RETIREMENT OF POST-LOCK INSTRUCTIONS

The present invention provides techniques for improving execution of a lock instruction. A lock instruction and younger instructions are allowed to speculatively retire prior to the store portion of the lock instruction committing its value to memory. These instructions thus do not have to wait for the lock instruction to complete before retiring. In the event that the processor detects a violation of the atomic or fencing properties of the lock instruction prior to committing the value of the lock instruction, the processor rolls back state and executes the lock instruction in a slow mode inwhich younger instructions are not allowed to retire until the stored value of the lock instruction is committed. Speculative retirement of these instructions results in increased processing speed, asinstructions no longer need to wait to retire after execution of a lock instruction. 本文提供用于改进锁定指令的执行的技术。允许锁定指令和较年轻指令在所述锁定指令的存储部分将其值提交给存储器之前推测性地引退。因此，这些指令不必等到所述锁定指令完成后再引退。在处理器在提交所述锁定指令的所述值之前检测到违反所述锁定指令的原子或防护属性的情况下，所述处理器回滚状态并且以