BRANCH PREDICTION BASED ON CORRELATING EVENTS

摘要

Branch prediction using a correlating event, such as an unconditional branch that calls a routine including the branch, instead of the branch itself, to predict the behavior of the branch. The circumstances in which the branch is employed, and not the actual branch itself, is used to predict how strongly taken or not taken the branch is to behave. A correlating value associated with the branch (e.g., an address of the instruction calling a routine that includes the branch), an address of the branch, and a value that represents the number of selected branch instructions between the anchor point and the branch are used to select information to be used to predict the direction of the branch.

主权项

1. A method of predicting the direction of branches, said method comprising:
obtaining, by a processor of a computing environment, a branch instruction for which a direction of a branch of the branch instruction is to be predicted; and predicting, by the processor, the direction of the branch, the predicting employing a correlating value to select information to be used in the predicting, the correlating value based on an occurrence of a correlating event used to obtain the branch instruction, the correlating event being an event different from the branch instruction and configured to affect a direction of a flow of code that includes the correlating event.