D. Background of the Technology of the ‘749 Patent

Microprocessors operate instructions that are usually stored in a memory that is slower than the CPU. U.S. Patent No. 5,440,749 (“the ‘749 patent,”), entitled “High Performance, Low Cost Microprocessor Architecture,”(Mar Dec., Ex. M) teaches a processor that fetches multiple instructions at a time, and then supplies them to the CPU in parallel (at the same time) in a single memory cycle. Since memory is generally slower than the CPU, being able to fetch and supply more than one instruction at a time increases the amount of instructions the CPU can receive in a given time, and thus increases instruction bandwidth. The ‘749 combines this technology with the last-in first-out data organization also called a “pushdown stack.” A stack is an efficient way of organizing data in computer memory that uses a last-in first-out data structure, and an intuitive way of organizing data for a processor to perform arithmetic functions.

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