MISPREDICTION OF PREDICTED TAKEN BRANCHES IN A DATA PROCESSING APPARATUS

Apparatus and a method of operating the same is disclosed. Instruction fetch circuitry is provided to fetch a block of instructions from memory and branch prediction circuitry to generate branch prediction indications for each branch instruction present in the block of instructions. The branch predi...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors ABERNATHY, Chris, FAROOQ, Muhammad Umar, ISHII, Yasuo
Format Patent
LanguageEnglish
Published 14.05.2020
Subjects
CALCULATING
COMPUTING
COUNTING
ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING
PHYSICS
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Apparatus and a method of operating the same is disclosed. Instruction fetch circuitry is provided to fetch a block of instructions from memory and branch prediction circuitry to generate branch prediction indications for each branch instruction present in the block of instructions. The branch prediction circuitry is responsive to identification of a first conditional branch instruction in the block of instructions that is predicted to be taken to modify a branch prediction indication generated for the first conditional branch instruction to include a subsequent branch status indicator. When there is a subsequent branch instruction after the first conditional branch instruction in the block of instructions that is predicted to be taken the subsequent branch status indicator has a first value, and otherwise the subsequent branch status indicator has a second value. This supports improved handling of a misprediction as taken.
Bibliography:Application Number: US201816185073