APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR PERFORMING HORIZONTAL FILTER OPERATIONS

An apparatus and method for performing FIR filtering and blending operations. A processor comprising: a decode unit to decode a packed N-tap finite impulse response (FIR) filter instruction, the packed N-tap FIR filter instruction to indicate one or more source packed data operands comprising a plurality of packed data elements, at least 3 filter coefficients, and a destination storage location, the plurality of packed data elements comprising data from a signal to be filtered and the plurality of filter coefficients specifying a filter function to be applied; and an execution unit comprising an FIR unit coupled with the decode unit, the FIR unit, in response to the packed N-tap FIR filter instruction being decoded by the decode unit, to perform at least N−1 multiplications to generate at least N−1 products, each of the multiplications comprising one of the filter coefficients multiplied by one of the packed data elements, the execution unit to combine the at least N−1 products in accordance with a specified type of FIR filter being implemented to generate a result packed data element to be stored in the destination storage location.