Patent attributes
Systems and methods for determining whether to retire a data entry from a buffer using multiple retirement logic units. In one embodiment, each retirement unit concurrently evaluates retirement conditions for one of the buffer entries in an associated subset (e.g., even or odd) of the buffer. Selection logic coupled to the retirement units alternately selects the first or second retirement unit for retirement of one of the entries in the associated subset. Because the aggregate number of entries retired by the combined retirement logic units is divided by the number of retirement logic units, each retirement logic unit has more time to process the retirement conditions for corresponding queue entries. The buffer may be any of a variety of different types of buffers and may comprise a single buffer, or multiple buffers.
