| 摘要 |
Prediction circuitry 40 for determining based on current prediction policy information 43 a predicted behaviour to be used for processing instructions. The current prediction policy information is updated based on an outcome of processing of instructions. A storage structure 50 stores at least one entry identifying previous prediction policy information 60 for a corresponding block of instructions. In response to an instruction from a block having a corresponding entry in the storage structure 50 which identifies the previous prediction policy information 60, the current prediction policy information 43 can be reset based on the previous prediction policy information 60 identified in the corresponding entry of the storage structure 50. This enables saving and restoring previous prediction policy information when a block of instructions is encountered again to reduce the warm up time and increase the likelihood that the prediction will be correct for the new block of instructions. The predicted behaviour may comprises a predicted outcome of a branch instruction, prediction of which processing mode to use or which data to prefetch from a cache memory. |
