About cookies on this site Our websites require some cookies to function properly (required). In addition, other cookies may be used with your consent to analyze site usage, improve the user experience and for advertising. For more information, please review your options. By visiting our website, you agree to our processing of information as described in IBM’sprivacy statement. To provide a smooth navigation, your cookie preferences will be shared across the IBM web domains listed here.
Publication
MICRO 1995
Conference paper
Dynamic path-based branch correlation
Abstract
Misprediction of conditional branches is a major cause for reduced performance in processor implementations with large numbers of functional units. We present a hardware scheme which records the path leading to a conditional branch in order to predict the outcome of the branch instruction more accurately. The proposed scheme is analyzed using instruction traces from integer benchmark programs. The results indicate that knowledge of path information leads to better prediction than knowledge of simply the previous branch outcomes for a given number of history items. The results further show that even for equivalent hardware cost, path-based correlation often outperforms pattern-based correlation, especially when history information is periodically destroyed, for example, due to context switches.