Maximal length immediates with fixed sign position

Abstract From the Canadian patent

A computer instruction set is presented in accordance with the preferred embodiment of the present invention. Some instructions within the instruction set have immediate fields which are allowed to vary in length and fill up all unused bit positions in the instructions. A sign bit is in a fixed location for instructions within the instruction set. For example the, sign bit may be right justified with respect to the immediate field, that is the sign bit is put in the least significant (rightmost) bit position. This allows time-critical suboperations to proceed without waiting for the value of the sign bit to be located and decoded.