A CPU Instruction Set Details

LWL rt, offset(base)

Description:

This instruction can be used in combination with the LWR instruction to load a register with four consecutive bytes from memory, when the bytes cross a word boundary. LWL loads the left portion of the register with the appropriate part of the high-order word; LWR loads the right portion of the register with the appropriate part of the low-order word.

The LWL instruction adds its sign-extended 16-bit offset to the contents of general register base to form a virtual address which can specify an arbitrary byte. It reads bytes only from the word in memory which contains the specified starting byte. From one to four bytes will be loaded, depending on the starting byte specified. In 64-bit mode, the loaded word is sign-extended.

Conceptually, it starts at the specified byte in memory and loads that byte into the high-order (left-most) byte of the register; then it loads bytes from memory into the register until it reaches the low-order byte of the word in memory. The least-significant (right-most) byte(s) of the register will not be changed.

The contents of general register rt are internally bypassed within the processor so that no NOP is needed between an immediately preceding load instruction which specifies register rt and a following LWL (or LWR) instruction which also specifies register rt. No address exceptions due to alignment are possible.

Operation:

Given a doubleword in a register and a doubleword in memory, the operation of LWL is as follows:

LEM Little-endian memory (BigEndianMem = 0)
BEM BigEndianMem = 1
Type AccessType (see Table 2-1) sent to memory
Offset pAddr2...0 sent to memory
S sign-extend of destination31

Exceptions:

TLB refill exception
TLB invalid exception
Bus error exception
Address error exception

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