What is Branch prediction?
A technique that predicts the outcome of conditional branches before they execute, so later instructions can proceed without stalling the pipeline. A misprediction forces the work to be redone.
Field: CPUs and architecture
Branch prediction in the explanations
Branch prediction guesses the outcome from past history and proceeds speculatively, redoing work only when wrong.
What is the purpose of branch prediction in a CPU?Data dependences, branches and resource conflicts disrupt the flow (hazards), handled with forwarding and branch prediction.
What is the main purpose of pipelining in a CPU?Superscalar issue, out-of-order execution, branch prediction and large caches all raise IPC.
Which metric indicates the number of instructions executed …
Questions that mention Branch prediction (3)
Related terms
Pipelining IPC Superscalar Out-of-order execution Amdahl's law Cache coherency Cache memory DMA (direct memory access) DVFS (dynamic voltage and frequency scaling) GPU