CLIAMS: 1. A machine readable storage medium containing program code that when processed by a processor causes a method to be performed, the method comprising:
creating a resultant rolled version of an input vector by:
forming a first intermediate vector by barrel rolling elements of said input vector along a first of two lanes defined by an upper half and a lower half of said input vector;
forming a second intermediate vector by barrel rolling elements of said input vector along a second of said two lanes;
forming said resultant rolled version of said input vector by incorporating upper portions of one of said intermediate vector’s upper and lower halves as upper portions of said resultant’s upper and lower halves and incorporating lower portions of the other intermediate vector’s upper and lower halves as lower portions of said resultant’s upper and lower halves.
,TagSPECI:Field of Invention
[0001] The field of invention relates generally to the computing sciences, and, more specifically, to an efficient vector roll operation.

Background
[0002] Fig. 1 shows a high level diagram of a processing core 100 implemented with logic circuitry on a semiconductor chip. The processing core includes a pipeline 101. The pipeline consists of multiple stages each designed to perform a specific step in the multi-step process needed to fully execute a program code instruction. These typically include at least: 1) instruction fetch and decode; 2) data fetch; 3) execution; 4) write-back. The execution stage performs a specific operation identified by an instruction that was fetched and decoded in prior stage(s) (e.g., in step 1) above) upon data identified by the same instruction and fetched in another prior stage (e.g., step 2) above). The data that is operated upon is typically fetched from (general purpose) register storage space 102. New data that is created at the completion of the operation is also typically “written back” to register storage space (e.g., at stage 4) above).